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Copyright, 1885, 
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) 


DOOM! 


.AN ATLANTIC EPISODE 


tJr ' 

justin h. McCarthy, m.p. 


Ji 

AUTHOR OP 


“an OUTLINE OF IRISH HISTORY” “ENGLAND UNDER GLADSTONE” 




OUR SENSATION NOVEL” ETC. 


Books yon may hold readily in your hand are the most useful, after all 

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To you, such as it is, this story of doom 
I offer, for it pleased you when we spun 
Its web together while June’s tropic sun 
Gilded the walls of that familiar room; 

Now, while the world beneath this Janus gloom 
Lies hidden deeper than the barbarous Hun 
Concealed the spoils of Rome, the task is done, 
And new tales tempt us ere the roses bloom. 
Forgive me where I fail in this, in all, 

And I, forgiven, will hope for better things 
And better days before the winter’s pall 
Of snow be lifted, and the swallow’s wings 
Bear back the welcome summer, and disenthral 
The bud that blossoms and the bird that sings. 
























































































































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DOOM! 


CHAPTER I. 

“MY NATIVE LAND, GOOD-NIGHT.” 

The Cunard S.S. Atlantis was getting up steam. 
In a few more minutes the signal would he given, 
and the miscellaneous crowd of kindred, friends, and 
visitors which thronged her decks, her saloons, and 
stairways would be unceremoniously sent on shore 
again, there to linger uncomfortably in their deter- 
mination to see the last of the man-made sea-creat- 
ure. Yet a few more minutes and the stately vessel 
would steer down the Mersey, widening to the open 
sea, and leave Liverpool on her lee. 

An ocean steamer is not seen at her best in those 
busy moments which precede departure, under con- 
ditions of noise and hurry, her white decks trampled 
by the feet of swarms of strangers. Under that as- 
pect she has vaguely the appearance of a beauty sur- 
prised in an unbecoming deshabille , or of a hero as he 
appears to the mildly speculative eye of his valet. 


4 


DOOM ! 


It is not until she has shaken off all these aliens, 
until she is well out of sight of solid earth, and has 
nothing around her, far as eye can reach, but the ma- 
jestic ring of meeting sea and sky, that a great “ liner” 
is really in her proper place*, and can be seen to most 
advantage. In that vast vacancy of water and shel- 
tering firmament the vessel becomes in herself a 
little world, a microcosm, a parody or picture in lit- 
tle of the great world which lies out there far away, 
somewhere beyond the sky-line. 

With her steerage passengers, her saloon passen- 
gers, her costly cargo, her energetic crew, her offi- 
cers, and her official head, she presents a well-nigh 
perfect reduction of any earth-borne system of hm 
man society. She is, in herself, as much of a world 
as Orbed Tellus or any of those planets that spangle 
the field of spheres. Like all other worlds, she should 
be investigated individually and alone. 

Such, at least, were the opinions and reflections 
of Algernon Judge, captain Cunard S.S. Atlantis , 
on that day in early July, as he superintended the 
final preparations before slipping cable and steering 
out to sea. Judge was a man of meditative mind, 
who seldom found leisure for the meditative mood. 
Under happier conditions, he always told himself, he 
would have made an excellent philosopher. It would 
have gratified him greatly to expound philosophy for 
others in an Athenian garden or a Roman villa. But 


MY NATIVE LAND, GOOD-NIGHT.’ 


5 


the floating cosmos to which destiny had devoted 
him was wholly unsuitable as an Academe or a Tus- 
culum. All the philosophy in him — and there was 
a good deal — he needed for himself, which was just 
as well, since he had no leisure to dole it out to 
others. He had not much time for forming many 
opinions, or for making many reflections on that* 
bustling morning; his ideas had to take shape as 
best they might amid the hurry and worry which 
are the inevitable attendants upon an outward-bound, 
so long as she is still within the harbor-line. But 
Algernon Judge had learned from long experience 
to form his opinions and to make his reflections while 
he was, at the same time, busily engaged in doing 
something else. Indeed, if he had not done so, he 
would have had to abandon the meditative mood al- 
together, for the occasions were rare, indeed, in which 
he was able to fold his arms and say placidly to him- 
self, “ Go to ; I will reflect upon life and destiny, 
and the sisters three.” To do him justice, he never 
complained, even to himself. A busy man, he al- 
ways said, must take his thinking, like his sleep, 
when he can. It is well to be able to sleep when- 
ever chance arises — to sleep standing, if need be, 
and if no more comfortable posture be practicable ; 
and what applies to sleep applies to thought. Such, 
at least, was the deeply rooted theory of Captain 
Judge. 


e 


DOOM ! 


Just at the present Captain Judge was tl linking 
chiefly of his imminent, departure, hut also not a 
little of his passengers. There was something very 
curious and very fascinating about each new world 
into which every successive voyage suddenly hurled 
him. To an imaginative mind such a situation must 
be full of attractive suggestions, and Captain Judge 
was happy in an imaginative mind. He liked the 
endless variety of society in a life of comparatively 
monotonous duties. True, no voyage is ever quite 
the same as another, but there is a similarity about 
them in their different seasons. When one crosses 
the Atlantic twelve times a year, one begins to find 
out the resemblances of voyages. To a sturdy sailor 
who does not care how high the waves are running 
or how loud the winds are roaring, a June voyage 
and a December journey present less difference than 
the tremulous landsman could think possible. The 
cruises, one with another, were much alike ; but the 
people — they were always differing. Judge felt him- 
self to be like the host of some inn on a posting-road 
in old days, whose ordinary was always full and al- 
ways changing. 

Every fortnight found him the ruler of the same 
kingdom, peopled by an entirely new set of subjects. 
For the seven or eight days of a voyage he sat at 
the head of his table with the same set of people, 
talked with them, listened to them, and just as he 


“MY NATIVE LAND, GOOD-NIGHT.’ 


7 


got to know all their names and all their way's, and 
to be interested in their comedies and complications, 
why, presto, the Atlantis was passing Sandy Hook 
or drifting up the Mersey, and one comedy was over 
and another about to begin. The scenery was al- 
ways the same, but the play was always shifting. 
The fellowship of one voyage was never identical 
with the fellowship of another voyage, or even re- 
sembling it. Sometimes a unit, or even a pair of 
units, from one cruise, by strange chance made their 
return journey in his ship, or came back by another 
and went out again with him ; but then they be- 
came different by the very passing of time, or by the 
altered situation and shifted companionship in which 
they found themselves. 

If you go to the top of the Tower of St. Mark, in 
Venice, the custodian will insist upon your taking a 
bird’s-eye view of the city through different bits of 
colored glass, red and blue and yellow. Seeing the 
same human beings in different societies, argued 
Judge, is to see them through glasses of different 
hues. The only fault Judge found with the varie- 
ty of dramatic entertainment afforded him by his lot 
was that it lacked change of motive. There was too 
much comedy, he argued. The sea and all that be- 
longs to it are tragic enough ; but thus far Judge’s 
floating drama had missed out the tragic element, 
and Judge grumbled. A ship is the very place for 


8 


DOOM! 


melodrama, he urged to himself ; why is the Atlan- 
tis unprovided for in this respect ? 

This time his ship’s passengers were all new to 
him, and they promised interest. Mentally he ran 
some of them over in his mind as he went about his 
work. There was a German, first of all, a professor 
from Bonn. He came early into the captain’s mind, 
perhaps because he cared least about him. The man 
seemed a studious type of scholar — a sort of Teuton 
ic Caxton, Judge classified him ; for Judge was fond 
of novels, and preferred talking of Bulwer rather 
than of Buddha. For the rest, the professor seemed 
a quiet man enough, who would probably be sick 
most of the voyage, and keep his cabin and creep 
about the deck on quiet days, and trouble nobody. 
His countenance was almost extinguished by the 
floating, unkempt masses of his yellow-gray hair and 
beard ; his eyes beamed blandly through the cir- 
cles of a pair of most uncompromisingly goggle spec- 
tacles of a vapory bluish tint, which gave to him 
something of the appearance of the proverbial owl 
in an ivy-bush. He was entered on the passenger- 
list as Herr Professor Maximilian Spruch, of Bonn, 
with a little multitude of initials coming like camp 
followers upon the heels of the main body of his 
name. 

Then there was Mr. John Harris, of London, the 
famous Jack Harris who laid down laws upon art to 


“MY NATIVE LAND, GOOD-NIGHT.’ 


9 


the city and the world. Judge had heard of Jack 
Harris, of course. It was impossible ever to take up 
a society paper without hearing of Jack Harris, who 
had turned aestheticism into a creed, and who was 
now going out to convert the United States to his 
ideas. 

Jack Harris had lately taken the Eighteenth Cen- 
tury under his special protection, and he favored that 
enlightened time — which he always seemed to re- 
gard as one unchanging period — in his costume as 
far as the limits of the tolerance of mankind and 
that most cruel of all critics, the small boy in the 
streets, would allow him. His cuffs were exagger- 
ated, his waistcoat elongated, the lappets of his coat 
as wide and stiff as in the days when they flapped 
over a small sword ; the bunch of seals which swung 
from his fob was the biggest in Christendom, and 
he dallied lightly with a cloisonnee snuffbox on 
which some modish heathen deities in powdered 
wigs disported themselves more joyously than deco- 
rously. Jack did not at all care for snuff, and dis- 
liked sneezing, but he felt it his duty as a devotee 
of the last century to affect an enthusiasm for “ Mac- 
kabaw ” which he did not feel. He would have worn 
a sword and a bag- wig if he might, but the restraints 
of the law forbade the one desire, and prudence 
counselled rejection of the other. As it was, Jack’s 
costume gave him something of the appearance of 


10 


DOOM! 


Mr. Swiveller, chastened and sobered by a slight af- 
finity to an old Chelsea pensioner. 

Judge smiled slightly as he thought of Jack Har- 
ris, and promised himself some amusement on the 
voyage in drawing out the sesthete, who was now 
walking up and down the deck in the company of 
certain of his disciples, with his head thrown back, 
and surveying the docks with an air of critical dis- 
gust. “ Doesn’t think they’re pretty enough,” mur- 
mured Judge to himself ; “would like to paint them 
sage green, and stick Japanese fans over them.” 
Then the captain smiled as he remembered that 
Jack Harris was not the only lecturer on board. 
He had a rival — a fair rival — in the person of a lady 
lecturer with a religion of her own, who proposed 
to make many converts in America. The pair, 
Judge fancied, would afford him no little entertain- 
ment. 

But Judge’s mind soon drifted from these and 
from all others to the passengers who most attracted 
his fancy. There were four of them : a father, a 
mother, and two daughters, the Yan Duytens. Hew 
York society knew the Yan Duytens well ; so, now, 
did London society. 

Yan Duyten the sire was one of America’s rich 
men. He did not, indeed, rank with the financial 
giants, with the Anakim of Wall Street, with Yan- 
derbilt and Jay Gould and the others ; but he was 


MY NATIVE LAND, GOOD-NIGHT.’ 


11 


richer than most of the British peerage, and that con- 
tented his modest ambition. He was fond, in a placid 
way, of ruminating over the rent-rolls of England’s 
nobility, and calculating how many of them he could 
atford to buy up at a swoop without seriously affect- 
ing his bank account. Mrs. Van Duyten was, on the 
whole, an amiable sort of person, with a marked 
tendency to overdress, overeat, oversleep, and, in fact, 
to overdo most of the ordinary duties that occupy 
existence. But it was not of the elder Van Duytens 
that Judge was thinking, as his eyes wandered to the 
group comfortably arranged on deck-chairs, with a 
quantity of chattering friends ranged around them. 

The two Yan Duyten girls did not greatly resem- 
ble either their father or mother, or each other. The 
poets who praised them — and they had found poets 
to praise them in two hemispheres and half a dozen 
European capitals — declared that they possessed the 
differing beauties of day and night, of spring and 
summer, of dawn and twilight, of sunlight and moon- 
light, with such other contrasting similes as suggested 
themselves to the young men their adorers, both in 
the Old World and the Hew. 

In all the solemn prose of truth the two sisters 
did, indeed, widely differ. Evleen, the eldest — their 
birthdays lay but a single year asunder — was tall and 
fair and strong, and in the three qualities of tallness, 
fairness, and strength her sister Rhoda closely re- 


12 


DOOM! 


sembled her. Indeed, neither of them was a typical 
American girl, of that kind which an ingenious writer 
has christened the dark- eyed daughters of dyspepsia. 
Both the Yan Duyten girls — so Jack Harris declared, 
in the poetic language which endeared him to his 
school — would have appeared equally at home in the 
company of Diana’s nymphs in the brake. Both, no 
doubt, if they had been properly trained, would have 
proved as skilful with bow or javelin by the reedy 
waters of Eu rotas, or along the wind-swept edges of 
the Arcadian Mountains, as they had already proved 
themselves to be with their tennis-rackets at Lon- 
don garden-parties, and at tournaments in Manhattan 
Island. 

The difference between the two consisted mainly 
in this — according to the prophet of culture — that 
something of the Oread or the Dryad still lingered 
in Bhoda’s composition, while no memories of a 
woodland past seemed to tremble along the chords 
of Evleen’s life. Her tranquil eyes, said Jack, poet- 
ically, were as deep as Thrasymene or the Y olsin- 
ian Mere; but you never saw there the shadow of 
an older world, or caught the least expression of a 
desire for any other than the hour in which she lived 
and breathed. It was quite true that Evleen found 
life exceedingly delightful. All that the heart of a 
girl could desire she had in abundance. She was as 
healthy as the ideal savage is popularly assumed to 


“MY NATIVE LAND, GOOD-NIGHT.’ 


13 


be ; she was as wealthy as the typical Russian prin- 
cess of romance ; and she was as wise as a clever girl 
of eighteen can be — far wiser than there was any 
need for rich Yan Duyten’s daughter to be. Of 
course she enjoyed life. She knew that it was pleas- 
ant, and her eyes — and not her eyes alone, but every 
movement of her body — betrayed the knowledge. 

Rhoda, too, found life pleasant, but not so pleasant. 
Their enemies — for they were young and pretty, and 
clever and rich, and had enemies in proportion — de- 
cided that Evleen was too strong-minded, and Rhoda 
too sentimental. Their friends declared that Evleen 
was the more practical, Rhoda the more poetical of 
the two girls. 

Jack Harris, with a fine instinct for literary effect, 
declared that they represented the opposing tenden- 
cies of the romantic and realistic movements. This 
was, in a measure, true, though Rhoda had never read 
a page of Theophile Gautier, or Evleen troubled her 
pretty head about the theories of Emil Zola. But 
while Evleen was frankly happy, frankly content 
with herself and with the world as she found it, 
Rhoda always seemed a trifle pensive, to put the 
thought prettily, or a trifle bored, to put it more 
bluntly. 

She was not quite so content with existence as Ev- 
leen; yet if any one had asked her, or if she had 
ever asked herself, she would have probably declared 


14 


DOOM! 


that she was as happy as her sister. Had she not, 
too, everything she wished for? She dearly loved 
travel, and she had wandered half over the world and 
seen more of it than was possible to explorers half a 
century earlier. Still, unknown to herself, she want- 
ed something which she had not got — though what it 
was she did not know. Whatever it was, it must 
have been, indeed, difficult to obtain, if rich Yan 
Duyten, of Hew York, could not obtain it to gratify 
the slightest wish of either of his daughters. 

For the rest, they both dressed exquisitely, with 
that kind of quiet faultlessness which is often the 
privilege and property of American girls who might 
be least expected to possess it. The two Yan Duyten 
girls — children of a lumber-merchant who had made 
his pile and converted it into a pyramid — were both 
inspired by a delicate artistic feeling, which was cer- 
tainly no inheritance from father or from mother, 
and which, as it were, consecrated them with an in- 
stinctive appreciation of what Saint Augustine called 
“.the fair and fit.” 

It was, indeed, an instinct, for their education had 
been eccentric and incomplete, and they had not the 
slightest affectation in their clay. Their mother, 
whose early life was passed largely on a Missouri log- 
raft, and whose principal pictorial notions were de- 
rived from the sign of the “Independence” Inn at 
Council Bluffs, talked art loud and long to all who 


MY NATIVE LAND, GOOD-NIGHT.’ 


15 


would listen to her. Indeed, among the stupendous 
baggage of the Van Duytens, which helped to choke 
the hold of the Atlantis , there was a goodly box de- 
voted to spurious Italian masters, which Yan Duyten, 
in obedience to his wife’s suggestions, had bought 
very dearly from the ingenious craftsmen of Rome 
and Florence, and would have to pay for again, and 
heavily, before he could pass it in triumph through the 
New York Custom-house. 

In this, as indeed in most other possible particulars, 
the girls did not take after their mother. They were 
fond of pictures, w T itli the quick, keenly perceptive 
fondness which they had for all beautiful things, but 
their vocabulary, which, to do them justice, was a 
wide one, was free from the jargon of dealers and the 
slang of studios. 

Judge did not know all this or any of it, as he ev- 
ery now and then allowed his glance to rest admiring- 
ly upon the sisters. Jack Harris could have told him 
as much and more, for Jack had met them many 
times in London, at the Duke of Magdiel’s and Sir 
Charles Amber’s, chiefly. They went everywhere, 
and Jack went to many places, and he had amused 
the Yan Duyten girls a good deal, and he had been 
pleased to express his approval of them in terms 
highly flattering to their personal beauty. 

Nothing — Jack had assured his friends of the 
Smollett and Acropolis clubs — nothing in the con- 


16 


* DOOM! 


summate loveliness of a Syracusan coin, nothing in 
the delirious perfection of the terra-cottas of Tenae- 
gra, could be said fairly to surpass the flawless ideal- 
ity of their faces and forms. The girls heard of his 
praises, and laughed and were amused. They knew 
quite well that they were more than pretty, and they 
were well content with the knowledge. They had 
not waited for the eloquence of Jack Harris to assure 
them that they were fair to look upon. They read 
that knowledge, as in a magic mirror, in the eyes of 
every young man they danced with at a ball, or 
brushed against in a crowded room, or passed in the 
street. 

They might have read it, if they liked, now in the 
eyes of Algernon Judge. Jack Harris could have 
told the captain of the Atlantis something of the 
characters of the two girls; but it needed no assur- 
ances from Jack Harris to tell Captain Judge that 
two fairer women never trod the decks of his vessel. 

But Captain Judge’s reflections on beauty in gen- 
eral, and the beauty of the Van Duyten girls in par- 
ticular, were harshly interrupted by the arrival of the 
moment when the Atlantis must depart. The warn- 
ing bell rang; warning voices shouted; busy officials 
collected the crowds of strangers together, and artful- 
ly directed their course towards the common focus of 
the gangway ; tender farewells that had taken long to 
utter were hurriedly blurted out at last ; strong grasps 


“MY NATIVE LAND, GOOD-NIGHT.” 17 

hastily pressed fair fingers ; men wrung each other’s 
hands warmly ; women kissed and cried — all was bus- 
tle, flurry, and confusion. But at last the final fare- 
well was spoken, the last hand-pressure given and 
received, the last tokens of love, of friendship, or of 
family affection exchanged; the stream of strangers 
had been carefully conducted down the gangway as 
down a sluice, and was allowed to flood the dock with 
a high tide of noisy humanity, waving handkerchiefs, 
kissing hands or shouting final words of wisdom, or 
wishing yet another godspeed. The many adorers 
of the fair Van Duytens gathered themselves discon- 
solately together. Merged with them, as rain - drops 
merge together to form a shining pool, were the 
friends who had come down to see J ack Harris fair- 
ly off on his new crusade. Theocritus Marlowe, Boi- 
ardo Polwheedle, and Heliogabalus Murdle had made 
the journey to Liverpool for the special purpose of 
seeing the last of their venerated young leader and 
champion. The ardor of this purpose was in no 
wise lessened by the pleasing knowledge that Evleen 
and Bhoda Yan Duyten were going down to the sea 
in the same ship as the illustrious author of “Women 
and Graves.” 

There was a trace of tears in the eyes of Theocri- 
tus as he thought of that evening, some few years 
earlier, when he had encountered Jack in the foyer 
of the Parthenon Theatre, and had consented to ini- 
2 


18 


DOOM! 


tiate him into the glories and mysteries of Higher 
Culture. How the pupil had become the master, and 
was going out, an aesthetic Alexander, to conquer a 
new world. 

It was almost too much for Theocritus’s feelings. 
A flood of recollections swept over his soul — their 
common labors in the sacred cause of aestheticism, 
their brief but brilliant period of companionship in 
Parliament, when for the first time an astonished na- 
tion was taught the real value and purpose of her 
senate, the blissful hours of Symposia. Theocritus 
wrung a hand each of Heliogabalus Murdle and Boi- 
ardo Polwheedle, and whispered, “ This is bitter, but 
it is our task to keep the pure flame burning on our 
English shrine while our dear master carries in his 
bosom the sacred fire to rekindle the, extinguished 
altars of the American republic.” 

Heliogabalus and Boiardo returned the melancholy 
pressure of Marlowe’s fingers, and then all waved a 
last wild farewell to the illustrious poet, who, leaning 
languidly over the taffrail, wafted them a condescend- 
ing but kindly salutation with his citron-colored pock- 
et-handkerchief. £ 

Every one on board appeared to be parting from 
some one. Even the female lecturer had her little 
knot of hard-visaged men and unkempt women, who 
gathered about her to catch her latest counsels and 
wish her well in her enterprise. 


“ MY NATIVE LAND, GOOD NIGHT. 5 


10 


Only the German professor from Bonn appeared 
to be entirely friendless. He did not seem much to 
mind his lonely condition. He sat contentedly on a 
big deck-chair, puffing at a gigantic porcelain pipe, 
which might well have made the most ambitious of 
his collegians envious, and surveying the jostling, ex- 
cited crowd blandly through his old-fashioned slate- 
colored spectacles. 

And yet he seemed to miss some one too, for every 
now and then he sent quick glances through the veil 
of gray smoke at the people about him, as if he ex- 
pected to find some familiar face among them. It 
must have been merely a fancy upon his part, or else 
he must have been bitterly disappointed, for no look 
of recognition came into his eyes as the last of the 
strangers was bundled off the Atlantis and on to 
land. Steam floated from the funnels of the Atlan- 
tis ; a kind of tremor ran through all her bulk ; an- 
other second and several feet of quivering water lay 
between her and the rapidly receding docks. The 
Atlantis was off, and all on board had said good-by 
to land till they met their mother earth again be- 
yond Sandy Hook. 

The professor leaned back, allowed his eyes to rest 
for a moment on a young man who made his appear- 
ance for the first time on deck, sent a gray cloud like 
a pillar of smoke up from the bowl of his big pipe, 
and apparently settled himself, if not to sleep, at least 


20 


DOOM! 


to sleep’s half-sister, reverie. Was he not a German 
professor, and are there not plenty of world problems 
still to solve, in spite of Schopenhauer and Hart- 
mann % 

Captain Judge, rejoicing in his heart to find him- 
self fairly under way, regarded the decks, thinned, in- 
deed, as to their population, but still well peopled and 
animated, with an air of satisfaction. His eye rested 
almost paternally on the various groups : upon the 
Yan Huy tens first, on whom the sun of Jack Harris’s 
favor was at that moment beaming; upon the lady 
lecturer deriving grim spiritual nourishment from a 
little volume of tracts ; upon the dreaming professor 
from pleasant, scholastic Bonn ; and finally, with an 
air of freshened and almost surprised interest, upon 
the young man who had just made his appearance 
on deck. 

Judge had not seen him before, but he guessed at 
once who he was. He was undoubtedly the young 
Englishman, Flavian Hope by name, who had insist- 
ed upon having a cabin absolutely to himself, and 
who had paid for the privilege the price of the un- 
occupied berths in his state-room. The Atlantis was 
not very full, and the lover of solitude was able to 
gratify his desire more easily than is often possible 
on an Atlantic liner. 

Judge surveyed the new-comer critically, as he 
would have surveyed a new hand ; decided that his 


MY NATIVE LAND, GOOD-NIGHT.’ 


21 


dark hair and eyes made him handsome ; that his 
closely shaven month and chin were weak. Judge 
felt that he should not like his first mate to have ex- 
actly that mouth and chin. He almost smiled as he 
made this reflection, for if there was one thing which, 
after managing a vessel, Judge did pride himself es- 
pecially upon, it was his quick-witted knack of read- 
ing the character of a man — or, for the matter of that, 
of a woman, though Judge knew less about them — 
in the lines of the face, the set of the mouth, and the 
glance of the eye. Judge felt quite convinced that 
he had accurately gauged the character of the young 
Englishman, who, after casting a hurried glance over 
the deck, had moved to the loneliest part of the ship’s 
side, and, leaning on the bulwark, was gazing with 
wistful intensity at the busy town and the low shore 
which seemed to diminish with every second as the 
Atlantis slowly forged her way out to sea. 


22 


DOOM! 


CHAPTER II. 

“THERE IS A WORLD ELSEWHERE.” 

There was one thing, however, which Captain 
Judge could not do, clever as he was, and that was to 
tell what Flavian was thinking of, as he sat there 
with his sad eyes fixed on the receding shores of 
England. If he could have known — what he was 
able to half guess later, when certain documents 
came for a short time into his hands — he would 
have been for at least five minutes, and for proba- 
bly a longer time, the most surprised captain that 
had ever served the Cunard Company. 

The thoughts of Flavian Hope had for some time 
past run almost entirely upon the two axioms which 
thus expressed themselves to his tortured mind : 
“ My God, what a fool I was !” and “ My God, what 
a rogue I am!” Yet Flavian did not seem to be of 
the stuff of which fools and rogues are made. He 
was a fellow of Cambridge, which is not much of an 
argument against his folly, and he was what is called 
a gentleman of independent means, which is no ar- 
gument at all against his roguery. 

Certainly he was not, in the ordinary sense of the 


“ THERE IS A WORLD ELSEWHERE.” 


23 


reproach, a fool. He had studied much, dreamed 
much, hoped much ; he was better educated than 
nine out of every ten young Englishmen of his own 
age and station; he had been counted a clever fel- 
low at college, one of the best men at the Union. 
Ho mere creature of books and words, either. Fla- 
vian was an athlete, and an oar. There is a staircase 
at his college, a solid stone affair as formidable to 
the inexperienced eye and mind as the Giant’s Stair 
at Venice, which the men of Flavian’s time, and the 
successors who remember their traditions, will tell 
you that Flavian cleared on one occasion by a stand- 
ing jump that never was equalled before or since in 
the annals of his college. 

As for his roguery, why Flavian never knew what 
debt meant at Cambridge ; and if any college friend 
had heard if suggested that Flavian was not a per- 
fect and honorable gentleman, the friend probably 
might have hit the doubter, had the doubter been a 
man, between the eyes on the spot for his insolent 
incredulity. And yet all Cambridge was wrong 
and Flavian was perfectly right. He was — at one 
and the same time — a fool and a rogue. 

He knew it only too well, as he sat there with his 
eyes fixed on the dwindling coast-line. That forest 
of masts, which are the pride and glory of Liverpool, 
and in consequence the pride and glory of England, 
seemed to him to take the form of some fantastic 


24 


DOOM! 


alphabet, and to trace against the widening sky the 
words “fool” and “ rogue” and “coward,” 

How he hated himself as he read the hideous 
thoughts of his own melancholy mind translated into 
the lines of the flickering spars that were gradually 
fading away out of sight. And yet, much as he 
hated himself, much as he was conscious of his own 
crime, there was not a man on board, down to the 
meanest sailor that ever handled a rope, who would 
not have hated him a thousand times more could he 
but have known truly the thoughts that were tear- 
ing Flavian’s mind in pieces as the Atlantis slowly 
cleared the bar of the Mersey. 

What were those thoughts? Flavian’s private 
papers made them common property to those who 
saw them later; we may forestall their knowledge. 
The eyes of Flavian were fixed on the fading shores 
of England. Any one who had gazed into Flavi- 
an’s eyes would have seen their own image painted 
upon his retina ; but what he really saw, with that 
inner eye which is at once keener and crueller 
than any human vision, was always the one scene, 
and that scene only a wide open space in a great 
town in Russia, the driving snow falling steadily, 
with a kind of white parody of pity, upon a dense 
and silent multitude. The eyes of all that multi- 
tude turned towards one object — the gaunt gal- 
lows that stood up horridly in face of them, with 


THERE IS A WORLD ELSEWHERE. 


25 


its lean black bars grimly outlined against the wan 
morning sky. 

On that gallows, presently, some culprits step 
forth to meet their death — three in all, two men and 
a woman. Any keen- sighted person near to that 
scaffold — and most of the correspondents of the for- 
eign papers who clustered about its base were keen- 
sighted persons — could see that the woman was gift- 
ed with singular beauty. One man far away in the 
crowd, though he could not distinguish her features, 
knew them well enough, could see every line of her 
mouth and eyes and hair ; saw them again and 
again long after that ghastly play had been played to 
the fall of the curtain ; saw them to the end — not 
merely saw them, but knew what was in the wom- 
an’s heart and mind ; knew what name, half whis- 
pered to herself, slightly altered the curve of those 
full, scornful lips, and slightly shadowed the pride 
of her brave, wide eyes. 

The same name was in the hearts and on the lips 
of her companions ; but that lonely, guilty wretch, 
alone in that vast assemblage, knew well enough 
that the same thoughts did not accompany it. He 
knew as well as if he were on that fatal gibbet that 
in the woman’s mind there were only thoughts of 
mercy and prayers for pity ; that in the men’s minds 
there were but black imprecations of hate and pray- 
ers for pitiless, horrible revenge. And he knew, 


26 


DOOM! 


too, that there were hundreds of persons in the broad 
dominions of the Tsar, ay, and in lands where the 
Tsar could claim no allegiance, whom the thoughts 
of those two men would reach and be remembered 
by when no human soul would echo the woman’s 
prayer for pity and pardon. 

Flavian did not need to close his eyes to see the 
whole horrible tragedy over again ; it was painted 
for him in unfading colors upon the broad surface 
of God’s sky. He saw with fearful clearness that 
throng, silent with an awful silence ; that woman 
with the fatal gift of beauty, whom he had loved and 
who had loved him ; those two men who had called 
him by the name of brother, and who were meeting 
death with such set, pale faces. 

There is a moment of awful stillness. One of 
the men comes forward to the very edge of the 
deadly platform, and cries out in a voice that rings 
to the very edge of the crowd — that will ring in 
Flavian’s ear till the day that he dies — the one ter- 
rible cry of accusation, “ They have tortured us.” 
The cry is answered by a low groan from that mass 
of spectators, and then cry and groan alike are si- 
lenced by the blare of music: the soldiers about 
the scaffold have struck up the National Hymn in 
obedience to the sign of their officer, and so in the 
noisy mockery of those strains the two men and 
the solitary woman are killed. The drop falls, the 


THERE IS A WORLD ELSEWHERE.’ 


27 


bodies dangle; all is over. The White Tsar is 
avenged ! 

If any one had told Flavian at six-and-twenty that 
he would ever have found himself a Russian Nihilist, 
he would have smiled at his informant’s folly. lie 
had walked little more than a third of the pathway 
of his life, when he found himself alone in the world, 
his own master, and the master, besides, of a fortune 
which was not, indeed, large, but which was quite 
large enough to allow him to live as he pleased, with 
neither thought nor care for the morrow, and in the 
full enjoyment of all that he cared to enjoy. His 
chief pleasure — a pleasure little gratified at the time 
— was foreign travel ; his chief ambition — so far as 
any ambition defined itself at all clearly to his mind 
— was to enter Parliament some day, and to make a 
figure there. It would be pleasant to hear the hal- 
lowed walls of St. Stephen’s echoing with the plaudits 
that always greeted Flavian when he rose to speak 
in the Union. But there was plenty of time for 
that. It was the peremptory duty of a future states- 
man to gain experience of foreign States, and, of all 
foreign States, the one of which full and complete 
knowledge seemed most necessary to an Englishman 
was Russia. 

To Russia, accordingly, Flavian went, and in 
Russia, unfortunately for himself, Flavian stayed — 
not very long, perhaps, but long enough to make a 


28 


BOOM! 


tremendous fool of himself ; a fool with that touch 
of the rogue and that horrible proportion of coward 
in its composition which now haunted his day-dreams 
and night-dreams. 

He could hardly tell how it all happened. Some 
chance words overheard at a cafe, a conversation in 
which he joined, prompted by the vanity of show- 
ing that he knew something of Russian and boasted 
of advanced ideas ; more meetings, more conversa- 
tions which tended to improve his Russian and make 
his ideas a little more advanced ; then the bright 
eyes and soft words of a woman, and then Flavian 
found himself one fine evening a recognized Nihilist, 
sworn to obedience of the dictates of that strange 
fellowship, and at the same time the possessor of a 
promise from the most beautiful woman he had ever 
seen or ever dreamed of. Even a placid English- 
man might be well forgiven for falling in love with 
Nathalie Sarovsky. She was young, she was beauti- 
ful, she was rarely educated, she was given with all 
her soul to the service of the Nihilists — with all her 
soul, but, unfortunately for her and for Flavian, not 
with all her heart. 

There was not a man of her section who was not 
in love with her, who would not have gladly given 
his life for her, who would not have done anything 
whatever that lay in his power, except to betray his 
cause, to bring one smile of pleasure to her pale 


THERE IS A WORLD ELSEWHERE.’ 


29 


cheeks, or win the reward of one grateful glance 
from her dark eyes. But she cared for none of 
them, cared for nothing hut her cause, until, for her 
sins, she encountered Flavian. She loved him, and 
he, in his way, loved her. She looked upon him as 
a young apostle of liberty from distant England. 
She listened to the turgid nonsense which had so 
often startled the Union, and which meant nothing 
in the mouth of a man like Flavian, as she had never 
listened to the words of the brotherhood. And so it 
came to pass that Flavian, hardly knowing what he 
was doing, woke one morning in St. Petersburg to 
find himself a Nihilist, and the lover of Nathalie 
Sarovsky. 

How did it happen? How did it all happen? 
This was the question he kept asking himself with 
endless and aimless iterance, as his memory dwelt 
upon the swift succession of events which had lent 
such tragic gravity to his commonplace, unimportant 
life. He thought with a kind of giddy horror of 
those Eussian days, of his deeper and deeper entan- 
glement in the meshes of the conspiracy. It all 
seemed like a play at first — the pass - words, the 
secrecy, the disguises, the strange companionship, the 
mysterious dangers and duties. To help in printing 
seditious newspapers, to aid in the promulgation of 
revolutionary pamphlets, to attend strange meetings 
in the cellars and attics of eccentric parts of the city 


30 


DOOM ! 


— if to do all this was to be a Nihilist, then to be a 
Nihilist was to undergo some very odd and fascinat- 
ing experiences. Flavian would have declared him- 
self a Buddhist, or a Mohammedan, or anything else, 
if his doing so would have brought him an ace near- 
er to the hand, the lips, and the heart of Nathalie 
Sarovsky. He was a Nihilist because his Nihilism 
gave him all three. 

Unfortunately for Flavian, his fellowship did not 
look upon their work as a more or less amusing 
game. They were in deadly earnest, and they be- 
lieved Flavian to be in deadly earnest too. They 
did not dream of the existence of a mind to which 
the whole thing was an interesting vacation experi- 
ence ; they could not guess at the mimetic facility 
of Flavian’s nature. They all adored Nathalie Sa- 
rovsky, but it did not enter within the compass of 
their thoughts that any one of them could possibly 
set his love for her above his love for the cause. Had 
they known Flavian better, there were men among 
them who would have blown his brains out with- 
out hesitation to keep the work from any mischief 
through him. There were men among them who 
bitterly regretted, long after, that they had not dealt 
thus sharply with him. 

But the majority of them believed in Flavian. 
They were completely deceived by his spurious air 
of energy, by the purely fictitious passion for liberty 


THERE IS A WORLD ELSEWHERE.’ 


31 


which he professed, by the fiery words with which 
he whipped the cool currents of his blood to what 
seemed very like true revolutionary boiling-point. It 
was not surprising that Flavian deceived his fellows, 
for he thoroughly deceived himself for a time. There 
were moments, and even long half-hours, in which 
he honestly believed that his soul was animated en- 
tirely by a loathing of tyranny, that his whole being 
burned with the wild desire to set the Russian peas- 
ant free from his oppressor. As he looked into Na- 
thalie’s eyes, as he listened to Nathalie’s voice, when 
he came from a meeting with her, with her kisses 
warm upon his lips, he needed no self-assurances to 
convince himself that he was heart and soul a Nihilist. 

But when the moment of action came, when the 
play he had been playing suddenly turned to serious 
and terrible reality, then the sham was shattered. A 
dangerous enterprise which had long been talked of 
was decided upon. Nathalie was one of the agents 
in the work, and Flavian was specially chosen for an 
important share in the scheme. He entered the plot 
blindly, like a man in a dream, still curiously and 
helplessly unconvinced of the reality of the whole 
business. It was only on the very morning of the 
proposed attempt that the full truth of the whole 
thing flashed upon him ; he seemed like a man who 
walks in his sleep and wakes untimely to find him- 
self at the edge of a precipice. 


32 


DOOM! 


Flavian lost his head hopelessly. He did not carry 
out his part of the task, he did not warn his com- 
rades of his sudden weakness ; he simply did nothing. 
All his strength and manhood seemed to crumple up 
and leave him limp, inert, and nerveless, incapable of' 
anything but dull inaction. The attempt was made, 
and failed, owing to his absence. It is not necessa- 
ry to say what the attempt was, or which one of the 
many Nihilistic conspiracies was that destined to 
prove fatal to Flavian. Enough that the attempt 
failed, that Nathalie and two of her fellow-conspira- > 
tors were arrested, tried as Nihilists are tried, were 
sentenced to death, and duly executed. 

Flavian, shrinking like a murderer from all hu- 
manity, could not leave St. Petersburg until the trag- 
edy was over — could not resist the horrible fascina- 
tion of witnessing the tragedy for himself. He had 
worn since his college days a dark mustache and 
pointed beard, which gave him, so he fancied, some- 
thing of the air of the stately Spaniards of Yelas- 
quez. He shaved close now and became practically 
unrecognizable. He took many precautions, disguised 
himself effectually, for he knew perfectly well that 
there was no forgiveness to be looked for from the 
revolutionary tribunal. He was doomed, he knew, to 
death as a coward and traitor, doomed by the terms 
of the oath he had so lightly taken. Flad the Nihil- 
ists been willing to forgive his crime, they would not 


“THERE IS A WORLD ELSEWHERE.’ 


33 


forgive him for the death of Nathalie. There was 
not, he knew, a single man who had ever called Natha- 
lie sister, who would not take a greater pleasure in 
^riving a knife into Flavian’s heart, or a revolver bul- 
let into his brain, than in sending a whole brood of 
Tzars to destruction. But he lingered disguised about 
the city till the day of death, lingered to look upon 
the last agonies of the woman he had loved, and who 
had loved him, and who was his victim. 

Then he fled, loathing himself, over the frontier, 
across Europe, and to England. There were mo- 
ments when he thought of killing himself, but his 
brain reeled and his hand faltered at the thought. 
He called himself unworthy to live, but he was afraid 
to die ; he vowed to kill himself, and shuddering, 
locked all his weapons out of reach ; he prayed for 
death, and fled in abject soul-conquering terror from 
the avenging arms of his accomplices. 

Life in England was impossible for him. The men 
whom he had betrayed might track him there easily 
enough. Through the familiar scenes of his youth 
there ran no Lethe to drug his mind and dull his 
memory. He resolved to go to America, to change 
his nan^e. Both resolves were easy to execute. He 
had money, and could hide himself in whatever cor- 
ner of the world he pleased. As for his name, that 
was an easy matter. One day while he was walking 
fearfully through London, fearfully as a ghost-haunt- 
3 


34 


DOOM! 


ed man might walk, making his lonely preparations 
for departure, the thought about changing his name 
came into his mind. As he thought, he looked up 
and saw the name “Hope ” over a shop. The charm 
seemed to his shaken mind of happy augury. Might 
not there be hope, indeed, for him elsewhere. So the 
old name of which he had been so proud, and which 
generations of stately country gentlemen, his ances- 
tors, had worn in pride before him, was shaken off 
forever. Ilis Christian name happened to be that of 
a Roman emperor whom his father, a scholarly man, 
had admired. One Roman emperor suggested an- 
other, and he became Flavian Hope. As Flavian 
Hope he took his passage in the Atlantis. Some- 
where in the great cities of the West he hoped to 
bury himself in safe and obscure exile. In the Hew 
World a new life might await him, where he might 
work out his redemption and live free from fear, and 
perhaps, in the fulness of time, forget. The crime of 
his youth need not blast his manhood and degrade his 
old age. This was what Flavian was thinking of as 
he sat on the deck of the Atlantis , and saw the scaf- 
fold rise from the shining waters, and the dead wom- 
an’s face shut out the sunset. 


WE WERE A GOODLY COMPANY.’ 


35 


CHAPTER III. 

“WE WERE A GOODLY COMPANY.” 

It is surprising liow readily a couple of days serve 
to make people acquainted on board an American 
liner. The passengers of the Atlantis had not left 
England forty-eight hours behind them before they 
all became pretty cordially familiar. 

There was something in the magical quality of the 
weather which especially served to encourage and 
cement this inter-oceanic Holy Alliance. Ever since 
the Atlantis had ploughed her way out of the mouth 
of the Mersey, a truly halcyon weather had attended 
upon her course. The great ocean lay all about her 
as tranquil as a lake — more tranquil, indeed, than 
many lakes, as old Yan Duyten observed, contrasting 
its conduct favorably with that of Lake Michigan, 
when on several occasions it had the honor to carry 
Yan Duyten and his fortunes. Nobody on board 
had been sick so far, not even Jack Harris. Jack 
had been a little nervous at first. His trips across 
the Channel had by no means taught him to regard 
himself as the one whom nature had destined for a 
.sailor’s life ; and indeed he only was able to support 


36 


DOOM! 


himself at all on those occasions by the reflection 
that, after all, even Csesar, imperious Caesar himself, 
was once sea-sick, and that Lord Kelson never began 
a cruise without suffering somewhat severely from 
that sea-born malady. But when he found hour suc- 
ceed to hour, and leave the wide Atlantic as calm as 
those bland waters of the Regent’s Park on which 
he had loved to disport himself in a skiff in the days 
before the name of Jack Harris had attained a more 
than European' reputation, he plucked up heart of 
grace and walked the decks of the Atlantis with the 
tread of a Columbus and the mien of a buccaneer. 

The rest of the passengers were equally fortunate. 
The Yan Duyten girls were never ill, neither was 
old Yan Duyten. He had crossed the Atlantic too 
many times to feel the slightest tremors of his inner 
man at its stormiest ravings. As for Mrs. Yan Duy- 
ten, she could be ill, ludicrously, absurdly ill, if occa- 
sion served, but the more than meridian softness of 
that summer sea defied even her deep desire to suffer 
martyrdom. The stern prophetess was believed to 
have been ill already, very ill ; if she had been she 
said nothing about it to anybody, and made her ap- 
pearance on deck and at meals with the punctuality 
and method of a night watchman. The German pro- 
fessor did not seem to notice whether he was on sea 
or on land. As he trailed up and down the deck, 
with the lappets of his loose frock-coat blowing be- 


“WE WERE A GOODLY COMPANY.” 37 

hind him like the eccentric wings of some strange 
sea-bird, he seemed as indifferent as if he were tak- 
ing his morning constitutional down the Poppels- 
dorf Alley in Bonn. His big pipe fumed incessant- 
ly, his spectacles beamed serenely, even caressingly, 
upon his co-mates and brothers in exile. He did not 
talk much, but he seemed to find a serenely medita- 
tive delight in forming one of a group of talkers and 
blinking good-natured attention. He speedily made 
friends with everybody on board, and was regarded 
by the Yan Duyten girls, whose word was already 
a verdict on board the Atlantis , as an exceedingly 
agreeable, philosophical old gentleman. 

And Flavian? What of him? He had sought 
no companionship, but companionship had sought 
him and found him. It is not easy to play the part 
of a hermit when one is a saloon passenger on a 
transatlantic liner. The claims of your fellow-man 
and of your fellow-woman upon your time and your 
attention are pressed with pertinacity at sea. You 
can hardly help becoming sociable, whether you will 
or no. Flavian’s was never a solitary spirit. He 
was gregarious ; he liked to be with people ; he 
talked, and talked well, and he could not talk to 
himself. The sound of his own voice had a fasci- 
nation for him ; his fluent speech intoxicated him ; 
no man, woman, or child had ever spent five minutes 
in Flavian’s company without being attracted by 


DOOM! 


him. He knew this. It was not so much what he 
said as the way he said it. There was a soft charm 
about the quality of his voice which won the heart 
of its hearer more subtly than a caress. While he 
talked he convinced himself that he believed what 
he was saying, and the sweet, firm tones of his voice 
carried conviction irresistibly to the ears of his hear- 
ers. On the eve of his great treachery he had spok- 
en at a meeting of the brotherhood with a passion- 
ate eloquence which drew the hearts of the men 
closer to him, and brought tears into the midnight 
of Nathalie’s eyes. 

In spite of his misery the mere animal part of 
Flavian thrilled with something almost akin to pleas- 
ure at being on shipboard. He was a good sailor, 
of course ; his bodily machinery was too well fitted 
together for him to feel anything but a healthy glad- 
ness in the stormiest seas. The sight of those acres 
of serene sea, the feel of the pure, cool air upon his 
face, the salt smell, the salt taste of the air, all these 
were physical joys which soothed his feverous body 
and lulled a little the fever of his mind. An under- 
lying sense of escape, of freedom, began to animate 
his languid pulses. Was he not sailing straight out 
to the west, to the land of promise ? “ Over all the 

mountains there lies peace,” said a poet whom Fla- 
vian loved. Might not peace lie too for him some- 
where beyond the waters, there in the unknown land 


“WE WERE A GOODLY COMPANY.’ 


39 


beyond those painted lines of sunset? When Fla- 
vian went on board he would have liked to think 
that he was the solitary occupant of the ship; yet 
land was scarcely lost to sight before his human in- 
stincts for society began to quicken. He had for so 
long shunned all fellowship that it gladdened him a 
little in his loneliness of mind to think that he was 
among a set of people of whom he need have no sus- 
picion, and whom he would part with forever on the 
threshold of the new world and the new life. He 
found himself studying his fellow-passengers with 
interest, and he felt no resentment at the interrup- 
tion of his solitary thoughts when, on the afternoon 
of their first day, the German professor interrupted 
one of his interminable tramps to wheel round upon 
him and begin to speak with him. 

The professor was communicative, even confiden- 
tial. He had lived most of his life in the university 
town, where lie filled a classical chair — ■ a peaceful, 
studious, sleepy kind of life, with its daily round of 
monotonous duties and monotonous pleasures, its 
lectures in the morning, its long walks by the river 
of evenings, its much reading and pipe-smoking and 
beer-drinking. Flavian listened with a kind of pity 
to the garrulous old man. If he had not been so 
wretched he would almost have felt amused. The 
Herr Professor was going to visit a brother who had 
settled out in Illinois, years and years before, and 


40 


DOOM! 


was now a prosperous and wealthy farmer. “ Think 
of it,” said the professor, contemplatively, sending a 
thin, straight volley of smoke into the air to herald 
his observations — “ think of it, how different two lives 
may be. Little Peter and I were inseparable in 
childhood ; we promised each other we would never 
part. By -and -by chance comes and carries little 
Peter off to America, and I remain behind in the 
fatherland. It is twenty years since we met, and 
now he is a rich man, oh rich ! so rich ! and knows 
nothing but farming and grazing, and I am a poor 
professor, with more languages in my head than 
coins in my pocket.” The remarks were addressed 
by the professor less, as it seemed, to his human audi- 
tor than to a solitary sea-gull that was swooping and 
circling about the vessel’s wake. But he suddenly 
brought them back to Flavian by asking him abrupt- 
ly, “ Do you agree with your countryman, that life 
is a jest, Mr. Hope ?” 

Flavian started, less at the somewhat absurd ques- 
tion jarring his strained nerves than at the unfamil- 
iar sound of his assumed name. The German waved 
his pipe apologetically. “ I see your name,” he ex- 
plained, “ painted on one of your trunks. You are 
Mr. Hope, are you not?” Flavian nodded. There 
was a kind of satisfaction he felt in being thus defi- 
nitely addressed by his new name. He almost felt 
as if the old professor were chanting a requiem for 


WE WERE A GOODLY COMPANY.’ 


41 


him over his buried past, and he felt vaguely grate- 
ful to him in consequence. A kind of friendship 
sprang up between them, and through the connect- 
ing link of the professor, who talked to everybody, 
Flavian soon found himself, almost against his will, 
on terms of intimacy with most of his travelling 
companions. Jack Harris was disposed to patronize 
him amiably until he found that Flavian knew much 
more about Greek plays than he did. The Lady 
Lecturer pressed a peppery little tract upon him, 
which Flavian gravely accepted and abandoned on 
a seat, where it was soon found by its indignant do- 
nor and confined with a vicious snap in the recesses 
of her reticule. The Yan Duyten girls took to Fla- 
vian enthusiastically. His appearance had prepos- 
sessed them in his favor ; his manners, his voice, his 
demeanor, tinged with that courteous sadness which 
is fascinating to women, confirmed their preposses- 
sion. 

They were interested in the lonely young man 
with the strong, lithe form, the dark, handsome face, 
and the dark, handsome eyes, with the far, melan- 
choly look in them, which, such was the mimetic 
quality of the man, he could not help intensifying 
when he saw the women watching him. So it came 
to pass that on the second day after the Atlantis 
sailed, Flavian, who had begun by intending to pre- 
serve an absolute isolation, found himself exceeding- 


42 


DOOM ! 


ly popular with all on board, and in constant inter- 
course with two young and lovely girls, both of 
whom seemed pleased, and one something more than 
pleased, to be with him and to talk to him. 

One particularly fine morning, when more than 
half of the journey of the Atlantis was done, most 
of her passengers were assembled on deck, enjoying 
the beauty of the sea and sky and air. 

There are few pleasanter sights on the face of the 
earth, or, to speak by the card, or by the chart of a 
master mariner, there are few pleasanter sights on 
the face of the water than the deck of a great Atlan- 
tic liner on a sunny day in summer out in mid-ocean. 
Captain Judge loved the sight dearly, and he had 
never loved it better than one hot afternoon when 
the Atlantis had made rather more than half of her 
voyage, and the chaotic agglomeration of individual 
units had settled down into a well-ordered, compact 
little cosmos of its own. All on board were good 
friends ; all, in obedience to the laws which govern 
the larger societies of solid earth, had sought and 
found their affinities and formed little associations 
and alliances which had their own separate existence, 
and yet were absorbed in the general body and were 
in union with it. As a single strawberry is in it- 
self, to the eye of the botanist, not an individual 
fruit but a congeries of fruits massed together in 
more or less imperfect pyramidal form, so the sum 


“WE WERE A GOODLY COMPANY/ 


43 


total of the passenger list of the Atlantis was com- 
posed of an aggregation of little companies in which 
like joined hands with like, and kindred minds en- 
tered into alliance. On those occasions of common 
union, when the bell summoned all on board to the 
many banquets which break up the monotony of an 
ocean voyage, these little differences disappeared, all 
were blended in a common brotherhood. Even the 
lady with the mission was known on these occasions 
to unbend a little, to suffer the rigid lines of her 
visage to relax into the nearest approach to a hu- 
man smile that she ever permitted herself, and she 
had been known on one occasion to express some- 
thing approaching to a regret that her companions 
were so inevitably drifting to the haven of perdi- 
tion. 

Captain Judge’s bright eyes beamed complacently 
over his mimic kingdom and his loyal subjects. The 
scene was exceptionally pleasant, and it gratified him 
almost as much as if he had brought it about by the 
skilful application of a quick mind to the laws of 
navigation and the study of steam propulsion. The 
morning was bright, luminous, warm, would be very 
hot by-and-by. Far away on every side the smooth 
blue waters ran away to meet the lips of the invert- 
ed bowl of the sky. Azure ocean and azure firma- 
ment faded into each other ; it seemed as if the 
great waves had invaded the empire of the air and 


44 


DOOM! 


suffused heaven’s cup with their own color. High 
in heaven the sun rode, squandering his golden light 
recklessly upon the glancing flood and glowing on 
the white decks of the Atlantis. Every one was on 
deck, every one was happy in the enjoyment of the 
sunlight and the stillness, and the sight of those 
spreading fields of sea. The emigrants, huddled to- 
gether in the fore-part of the ship, drank in the sweet 
influences of the morning as tired flowers drink dew, 
and seemed to grow visibly better for it as flowers 
do. There seemed to be a gentler tone in their ba- 
bel of voices. Even the roughest of those pilgrims 
grew tenderer, even the noisiest more tranquil, in the 
face of those smiling heavens and that gentle deep. 
There were people of all nationalities on board ; all 
tongues were talked, all racial types were recogniz- 
able ; the soft accents of the County Kerry mingled 
with the sharp, almost English, intonations of the fair- 
haired Swede, and the mild-eyed Mongolian sunned 
himself peaceably by the side of the Teuton, the 
Briton, or the Gaul. The captains of to-day are kind 
to those whom fortune forces to travel steerage. 
Judge was kind among the kind, but on this morn- 
ing he was not thinking of his steerage passengers, 
but of the groups that were scattered over the quar- 
ter-deck. 

Some lay lazily on deck - chairs and read, or pre- 
tended to read, dozing deliciously over volumes which 


WE WERE A GOODLY COMPANY.' 


45 


fell every now and then from their relaxing fingers. 
Some had stretched gayly colored rugs upon the 
decks, and reclining comfortably, played cards togeth- 
er. Ever and anon they would lift their eyes from 
their painted mysteries to gaze dreamily out to sea, 
and forget for a moment their pasteboard monarchs 
and the fortunes of the game to let their fancy float 
with some long ripple, or fly on the curve of some 
sea-bird’s wing. Others, of energetic mind and body, 
played, indifferent to heat, at shovel-board, or walked 
the deck with the regularity and solemnity of pro- 
fessional pedestrians. Along the shady side of the 
deck-cabin most of the womankind had ranged their 
chairs, and worked or chatted. Some children had 
been lifted into one of the ship’s boats, and were 
making merry with their toys, and sending down lit- 
tle gusts of shrill, childish laughter. Other children 
clattered about the decks, exploring every part of the 
great ship, which was to them an illimitable king- 
dom, and getting into the way of every one with the 
good-humored cynicism of childhood. 

Jack Harris sat under a huge umbrella by the 
side of Mrs. Yan Duyten, talking art to her and lis- 
tening with generous interest to her thoughts on art. 
The German professor walked up and down with 
old Yan Duyten, discussing the social and econom- 
ic problems of America, or rather listening placidly 
while Yan Duyten harangued him, and through him 


46 


DOOM! 


the world at large, on those vast subjects. Evleen 
and Rhoda sat together reading. They had declined 
all offers of companionship, all inducements to play 
games of any kind. With the easy frankness which 
was characteristic of them, they let their numerous 
adorers know that they wished to be left alone for a 
while, and dispersed their disconsolate little court to 
seek nepenthe in the pastimes of the deck or the se- 
clusion of the smoking-cabin. 

Captain Judge watched the two girls admiringly. 
The penalty of banishment did not, of course, extend 
to him — the captain is an unquestioned autocrat — 
but though he was for the moment free from duty, 
he did not quit the bridge from which he was watch- 
ing the deck and its occupants. 

He was waiting for something to happen which 
did shortly happen. The girls were ostensibly read- 
ing, but they seemed to talk to each other more than 
they read. They had been silent, however, for a lit- 
tle wdiile, when Judge saw Evleen whisper some- 
thing to Rhoda, whose face slightly colored. Captain 
Judge’s smiling eyes followed the direction of Ev- 
leen’s glance — Rhoda’s attention was devoted to her 
book — and saw Hope making his appearance at the 
top of the cabin stairs. 

Hope had a book in his hand, and was evidently 
making his way to that part of the deck where Rho- 
da and Evleen were sitting. Captain Judge, still 


“WE WERE A GOODLY COMPANY.’ 


47 


quietly smiling, quitted his station and made his way, 
too, towards the Van Duyten girls. 

He reached them only a moment or two after 
Hope, and Hope was speaking to Klioda. Captain 
Judge saluted the ladies, nodded to Hope, and pro- 
posed a promenade to Evleen. Evleen smiled, rose, 
and took his arm. The astute captain had chosen 
his time well. He knew, for he was a student of 
mankind and an oceanic philosopher, that Evleen 
would willingly leave her sister alone with Hope. 
He was beginning, too, to understand that she would 
as soon have his companionship as that of any other 
man on board the Atlcmtis. 

Evleen and the captain moved away. Hope drop- 
ped into Evleen’ s vacated chair by the side of Khoda, 
and looked up into the girl’s face. The warm flush 
that had come into her cheeks when Evleen had 
whispered to her of Hope’s approach had not yet 
left them ; her eyes were very bright as they looked 
down at Hope, her parted lips smiled a little tremu- 
lously. The captain of the Atlantis was quite right 
in his impression that Khoda was always pleased 
when Hope was with her. The faintest apology for 
a breeze — a very baby among zephyrs — stirred the 
soft brown curls about her forehead into a gentle 
motion. Hope, looking up at her, thought that he 
had never beheld a fairer .face, doubly fair just then 
because it seemed to come between him and some 


48 


DOOM! 


haunting memories, and banish them for a moment 
with its sunlight. 

“ Have you got the book?” Rhoda asked. 

She bent forward as she spoke to look at the little 
volume in his hand, and her face came very close to 
his. Flavian was silent for a moment, silenced by 
the exquisite delight of looking at her, of having her 
so near to him. She looked up from the book into 
his eyes, and he was obliged to speak. 

“ Yes,” he said, holding the little volume out to 
her ; “ I thought I had brought it with me. It is 
an old friend of mine, and I should not like to travel 
without it.” 

She took the book from his hands, and as her fin- 
gers touched his, the dead pleasure and the dead pain 
which he believed he had buried forever seemed to 
quicken again for one fiery moment. The book was 
a little Petrarch, one of those dainty Italian editions 
dear to the lover of diminutive volumes. Rhoda 
took it and opened it with a pleased smile, her eyes 
glancing over the pages with that look of intelligence 
which showed that the foreign language was familiar. 

Hope, as he watched her, felt as if he were witness- 
ing the opening of a grave. The little volume which 
lay in the white small hands of Rhoda had been given 
to him by Nathalie. She had given it to him on the 
night when he first told her he loved her; he re- 
membered kissing it passionately, and swearing to 


WE WERE A GOODLY COMPANY.’ 


49 


keep it forever. It was, indeed, the only relic of her 
which he had preserved, the only thing he owned 
which served directly to link him with that dead 
past, from which he was now so feverishly eager to 
cut himself off forever. He had brought the book 
away with him because he could not bring himself to 
destroy it, but he had not thought to look upon its 
pages so soon again. 

Within the last few days his acquaintance with 
Rhoda Van Dnyten had strangely grown into friend- 
ship ; there were even sudden moments when he 
asked himself fearfully if the purple blossom of 
friendship was once again to ripen into love’s fruit. 
They had talked of poets, and of Petrarch, youth’s 
dear poet, and Rhoda had expressed a desire to read 
some of the sonnets of the lover of Laura. Flavian 
would have done much to gratify $ wish of Rhoda’s. 
Here was a wish that he, probably, alone, of all on 
board, could possibly gratify. He had told her that 
he believed he had his Petrarch with him ; he had 
promised to look for it ; now he had found it, and it 
lay in her hands, and her eyes rested on its pages of 
marvellous devotion and unconquerable passion. 

Flavian, as he watched her, felt himself tremble 
with pain and pleasure and shame — pain for the old 
love and the old life, with its ghastly ending ; pleas- 
ure in the new life which already seemed more of a 
possibility, and the new love that seemed as if it might 
4 


50 


DOOM! 


sanctify it ; shame, vague, ill-defined, but ever present, 
to find that he could, so soon, have allowed his dark- 
ened heart to be again illuminated for the presence 
of another guest. He had promised himself that his 
heart should be but a Chapelle Ardente, where lights 
burn dimly for the dead, and lo! already the torches 
of passion were beginning to blaze, and the perfume 
of flowers to overpower the heavy odors of the con- 
secrating incense. 

He sat silent for a few seconds, with his arm rest- 
ing on his knee, and his chin on his hand, gazing in 
a dazed way out to sea. Her face, stooping over the 
little volume, was very close to his, so close that, if 
he had merely turned his head round, his lips would 
have brushed her cheek. 

He was not thinking of her ; he was thinking of 
the old love and the old life, whose memory had been 
slowly dulling, filming over during the voyage. A 
slight exclamation from the fair girl beside him 
roused him from a silence which seemed to have 
lasted for hours, and had only been a business of 
seconds. Flavian turned sharply, so sharply that 
his lips passed very near to Ehoda’s cheek, and just 
grazed one of the curls of fair hair which the baby 
zephyr was playing with. 

Flavian felt his face flame, but it paled again in- 
stantly when he saw what had caused the girl to 
break the brief silence. She was pointing to the 


“WE WERE A GOODLY COMPANY.’ 


51 


page she had opened, and Flavian’s eyes following 
the direction of her finger, saw some words traced 
on the tiny page. The words were written in a 
woman’s writing and were in Russian character. He 
knew the hand well enough, though he had never 
seen the writing there before. It was characteristic 
of the man to have taken this love gift from the 
woman he loved and never to have opened the little 
volume afterwards. He had kissed it passionately 
when she put it into his hands ; he had vowed never 
to part with it, and he had not parted with it. But 
he had never read it, never turned its pages through, 
never seen the lines which her hand had traced over 
one of the sonnets. 

“ What a pretty hand,” said Rhoda, looking up 
with clear blue eyes of wonder ; “ and what an odd 
character. It isn’t German, is it? What does it 
mean ?” 

Flavian shook his head and reached out his hand 
for the book. He felt cold as death, and his eyes 
were blinded with tears. This was more than he 
could well bear, this message from the grave — from 
that dishonored grave by the Russian prison, where 
the hand that wrote was mouldering. 

It was not half a year since she had given him the 
book. When she wrote those lines she was fair and 
loving and full of hope ; now she had died a shame- 
ful death, and he, her lover, was flying from vengeance 


52 


DOOM! 


and remorse, to bury himself in the living death of a 
new world. The lines swam before his eyes. They 
seemed to be written in blood. Good God ! Was 
he going to faint ? 

“Well,” said Rlioda, inquiringly, “what do the 
funny words mean, anyhow ? Something sentiment- 
al, I guess.” 

She said this with a slight smile ; but she was not 
scornful. She felt just then as if she, too, could have 
written something sentimental in any book she gave 
to Flavian. 

Flavian controlled himself with a desperate effort 
and shook his head again. 

“ I do not know,” he said. “ I bought the book 
second-hand ” — his lips quivered slightly over the lie 
— “and I never noticed the writing before. The 
writing is in some foreign character, but I do not 
know the language.” 

A dark shadow fell upon the page. Flavian and 
Rhoda both looked up. The German professor was 
beaming blandly down upon them ; by his side stood 
old Van Duyten. They had paused in their walk to 
join the group formed by the young man and the 
young woman. 

“You seem mighty wrapped up in that book of 
yourn,” said Van Duyten, meditatively, “ and so I 
allowed we’d just stop in and see what it was.” 

Rhoda’s face brightened. 


“WE WERE A GOODLY COMPANY.” 53 

“Mr. Hope and I,” she said, “have just been 
dreadfully puzzled by some writing in a book. You 
can’t help us, papa; but you can, professor, for you 
know everything.” 

The professor smiled a good-humored protest out 
of the mazes of his grizzled beard, while Rhoda took 
the little volume from Flavian’s unwilling fingers 
and handed it to him. The professor looked at the 
page and the passage, and Rhoda, looking up at him, 
saw such an expression come into his face that she 
knew he understood the passage and found it inter- 
esting. If Flavian had seen the look, he might have 
read in it a passion which was somewhat incongru- 
ous. But he was staring listlessly out to sea and 
noticed nothing. 

“ Well,” said Rhoda, eagerly, “ what does it mean ? 
It is quite exciting, coming across hieroglyphics of 
that kind. Perhaps we hold the clew of a romance 
in our hands.” 

The professor’s face had entirely lost its transient 
expression of interest, and was as placidly unmoved 
as ever. 

“ It is not very exciting,” he said, “ although per- 
haps a little romantic, as well as I can make it out. 
The language is Russian, and I know a little Russian 
— a very little. When I was a boy I went in for 
studying all languages, and I think I have not quite 
lost my cunning.” 


54 


DOOM ! 


“Well, well,” said Rlioda, impatiently, “what does 
it mean ?” 

“ The lines,” said the professor, slowly, with a 
voice as studiously deliberative as if he were harang- 
uing his class — “ the lines are poetry.” 

“Poetry?” interposed Rhoda, joyously ; “oh, how 
delightful ! Pray read them.” 

“ If I can,” answered the professor, with a little 
bow, which expressed courteous humility. “ As well 
as I can make it out, they run thus : 

“ ‘ We cannot , alas, bind to the bank one single 
ripple of time , whether it be bitter or sweet ; but we 
can cast upon the fleeting wave the wrack of our 
ha/ppiness in memory of what we were? ” 

The professor read out the words with a smooth, 
unfaltering monotony, hut his hands trembled a little 
as they held the volume. After all, the professor 
was not a young man. Rhoda listened with soften- 
ing eyes. Flavian shuddered to hear those words 
which his dead love had written there for him thus 
read out by the callous voice of a stranger. When 
Rhoda had handed the book to him, he had not read 
the lines, only recognized their presence. Now, as 
he heard them, he groaned inwardly. 

“ How very sweet and sad,” said Rhoda, medita- 
tively. “I wonder who wrote those words. A 
woman, of course, and in love, I suppose, poor thing,” 
she added gently to herself. 


“WE WERE A GOODLY COMPANY.’* 55 

Van Duyten shrugged his shoulders, and observ- 
ing that he “ didn’t set much store by verses nohow,” 
proposed to the professor to resume their prome- 
nade. The German assented, handed the little vol- 
ume back to Rhoda, and moved away with her fa- 
ther. Rhoda and Flavian were alone again. 

“There ought to be a story connected with those 
lines,” said Rhoda, turning to Flavian ; and then see- 
ing how white he was, she asked him hurriedly if he 
were unwell. 

Flavian smiled faintly. 

“I was ill before I left England,” he pleaded, 
apologetically. “ I grow faint sometimes.” 

“ Will you go and lie down,” she asked, and as 
Flavian shook his head, 

“ Come for a walk,” commanded Rhoda, deci- 
sively. 

She got up, Flavian imitating her mechanically. 
She took his arm, and they walked up and down for 
some time. Under the influence of her beauty, her 
quick bright talk, and the pleasant sense of compan- 
ionship involved by the pressure of her arm on his, 
Flavian gradually shook off the disagreeable thoughts 
that had crowded in upon his mind since the discov- 
ery of the lines in the volume. 

When they came back to where they had been sit- 
ting, to collect Rhoda’s possessions before going down- 
stairs to dinner, the little Petrarch was not to be 


56 


DOOM! 


found. In vain Rhoda turned over all her wraps, in 
vain slie made Flavian search his pockets, a process 
which she knew was idle, as she felt convinced that 
she had laid it on her chair when she rose to walk. 
The little volume was missing. Mrs. Van Duyten, 
ignoring the geniality of the baby zephyr, suggested 
that it had blown out to sea. Mr. Yan Duyten and 
the professor, when appealed to, knew nothing about 
it. Undoubtedly it was somehow or other mislaid. 
Flavian was puzzled, but not grievously pained. He 
only wished with all his heart that it had been lost 
before he learned of the secret it contained, and had 
received Nathalie’s message. 


“THE BEST OF THE KIND ARE BUT SHADOWS.” 57 


CHAPTER XV. 

“THE BEST OF THE KIND ARE BUT SHADOWS.” 

There was an entertainment to be given that day 
on board the Atlcmtis. Any one who has ever trav- 
elled in an Atlantic liner will recollect the eagerness 
with which any little pretext is always seized upon 
which gives occasion for a concert, or some hastily 
improvised theatricals, or an impromptu dance, or 
even a scientific lecture. The presence on board of 
an eminent actor, or author, or divine, inevitably re- 
sults in that divine, or author, or actor being called 
upon to contribute in some degree to the greatest 
happiness of the greatest number by employing his 
talents for the amusement or the instruction of his 
fellow-passengers. 

The passengers of the Atlantis had devoted some 
time and trouble to the organization of an entertain- 
ment to be held on deck ; but they were not actu- 
ated solely by a desire for amusement. 

Among the steerage passengers were a poor couple. 
The wife had been for some months ailing, and her 
husband was convinced that a voyage to America 
might be the means of restoring her to health ; he 


58 


DOOM! 


accordingly sold liis little business, and took places 
for himself, wife, and child on the Atlantis. But in- 
stead of the sea air effecting his wife’s cure, it pro- 
duced a totally opposite effect, and four days after 
the vessel sailed the poor woman died. 

Those who were charitably inclined had proposed 
that a subscription should be made for the bereaved 
husband, and eventually it was settled that a few 
songs, readings, recitations, etc., should be given by 
such of the passengers as were willing, and at the 
end of the entertainment a plate was to be passed 
round for contributions which were to be handed 
over to the object of charity. 

The entertainment was fixed to take place at four 
o’clock, to the satisfaction of every one, with the ex- 
ception of a few old ladies who grumbled at the loss 
of their afternoon tea, and of the inevitable sprin- 
kling of discontented spirits, to be found in every 
large company, who make a point of steadily disa- 
greeing with the general arrangements. At the ap- 
pointed hour the deck, which had for some time been 
the scene of unwonted activity, suddenly assumed an 
aspect of order and tranquillity, slightly tempered by 
the occasional buzz of expectation from the feminine 
portion of the audience. 

It was a pretty sight. On the upper deck a small 
space had been cleared for the performers. Round 
it, in ever- widening circles, women were grouped on 


“THE BEST OF THE KIND ARE BUT SHADOWS.” 59 

rugs and deck-chairs. A fair number of them were 
pretty, most of them were dressed in soft, cool, sum- 
mer stuffs, and as a whole they were very pleasant 
to the eye. Behind them the men stood lounging 
against the deck -rails, or leaning over some chair 
whose occupant they found more entertaining than 
the programme prepared for them. 

Judge and the first officer looked down from the 
little “ spy -deck.” The lower deck was crowded 
with steerage passengers, who scrambled up the steps 
and hustled one another good-humoredly in their ef- 
forts to command a view of the upper deck, their 
rough, eager faces and keen interest in the proceed- 
ings contrasting oddly with the chatter of the wom- 
en and the half bored expression of the men in the 
gayly dressed crowd above them. A tiny, poorly clad 
child had pushed her way to the top stair, and was 
surveying the company from her perch, her face ex- 
pressing conflicting emotions — glee at the approach- 
ing treat, and regret that “ father ” had not secured 
a place beside her. It was the dead woman’s child, 
and many a pitying glance rested on the little face 
beaming with the happy forgetfulness of childhood. 

Jack Harris was not the only public character on 
board the Atlantis , and he had been much pressed 
by his travelling companions to give them a taste of 
his quality. Whatever else Jack Harris had accom- 
plished, he had made himself talked about, and his 


60 


DOOM! 


presence on the steamer was matter for infinite curi- 
osity to the other voyagers. Already he had made 
himself as conspicuous in the little world of ship- 
board as he had done in the larger world of London. 
All the women liked him, and, which was more re- 
markable, so did the men. Jack Harris was general- 
ly popular with women ; lie always paid them in his 
poems and in his life an exaggerated homage which 
amused but did not fail to flatter. He declared again 
and again in his writings and his utterances that the 
main purpose of woman’s existence was to be beauti- 
ful in his eyes, and yet he often was conspicuously 
attentive to plain, not to say ill-favored women ; and 
not merely to plain women, where lovelessness was 
softened by the golden tints of reflected wealth, and 
to whom he offered the honest homage which money 
always gets from art, but plain women who were 
poor, who were uninfluential, who were not even 
clever. Perhaps he learned subtler lessons in the art 
of pleasing pretty women from his attentions to their 
plainer sisters, perhaps he was simply good-natured, 
perhaps he wished for allies in all camps. Women 
as a rule liked him even when they laughed at his 
theories and his affectations. Men often disliked him 
cordially at first, only to find on acquaintance that 
he was pleasant, that he was witty, and that his aes- 
theticism was but the modish mask for a Eabelaisian 
appetite for all things appetizing. 


“THE BEST OF THE KIND ARE BUT SHADOWS.” 61 


Jack Harris rose from the cane chair in which he 
had been languidly reclining, and advanced with 
measured steps and an air of studied indifference into 
the centre of the little circle. 

Passing his hand slowly through his long hair he 
paused for a moment, until the little buzz of excite- 
ment which had greeted his appearance had died 
away. Then allowing his look to travel for a mo- 
ment round the little amphitheatre of expectant faces 
fixed on him, he threw his head back, advanced one 
foot a little, and, folding his arms, began to speak in 
slow tones which combined something of a solemn 
majesty with the touch of a tenderer pathos. 

“ I am going,” he began — “ I am going to address 
to you a few words upon the art of living — upon the 
perfect life. I am appalled, as all serious students of 
mankind must be appalled, when I reflect upon the 
few, the very few, who understand what the perfect 
life is ; and the still fewer, the chosen of the chosen, 
as it were, who have the courage to live that perfect 
life. Most of us ” — and here again Jack Harris sur- 
veyed his audience with something of Olympian se- 
reneness in his glance — “most of us do not live at 
all ; can hardly be said to exist even. What is there 
in these common lives of ours, in our daily routine 
of pitiful occupations, and still more pitiful pleas- 
ures, which makes existence not merely a thing to be 
cherished, but even to be accepted ? The world has 


62 


DOOM ! 


grown old and gray before its time. The dust of 
crumbling creeds has powdered its hair with a harsh- 
er whiteness than that of old; and we all appear to 
have fallen into a kind of joyless trance or stupor, in 
which our numbed senses are lulled into a bare ob- 
livion, not by sleepy essences of hemp or poppy, not 
by the subtle slumber which lies in the blood of the 
vine, but by the freezing, fatal torpor of winter and 
of snow-bound sleep.” 

Here Jack Harris paused for a moment, and his 
eyes wandered away over the heads of his audience, 
far out over the blue and tranquil waves, as if he 
sought, somewhere beyond the sky-line, some satisfac- 
tory answer to the problem of existence. 

His audience in turn surveyed their preacher a lit- 
tle uneasily. Most of them did not understand what 
Jack Harris was saying, and had a kind of vague, 
unpleasant conviction that they were being patron- 
ized or snubbed. The Yan Duyten girls were frank- 
ly and delightedly amused. Yan Duyten himself 
was quietly watching Jack Harris with the same de- 
gree of speculative interest in his keen gray eyes that 
an entomologist might feel on being introduced to 
some new specimen of beetle. Judge, with an un- 
moved face, was keenly calculating whether he should 
laugh more with or at the apostle of higher culture. 
Flavian was hardly listening to him at all. From 
w T here he sat, a little way off from Rhoda, he could 


THE BEST OF THE KIND ARE BUT SHADOWS.” 63 


look uninterruptedly upon her fair profile, as she 
leaned forward looking up with curious interest at 
the speaker, and could allow his mind to slip into the 
sweet, strange, delicious reveries which had so long 
been estranged from him. 

Jack’s pause did not last long. With something 
like a sigh he began again. 

“ Life is a juggle, a jest, a puppet-show ; what you 
will. Some of us are players on the stage, some of 
us are spectators in the parterre or in the boxes, or 
with the high gods in the gallery ; but it behooves 
each of us, whether as actor or as spectator of the 
shifting scene, to make the most of our little hour, 
of the applause which we give or take, of our brief, 
passionate enthusiasms. Each of our lives is like a 
sum of money : so much is given us to spend — so 
much and no more ; and yet how few of us know 
how to spend it. Thrifty economists in all else, we 
squander our lives without a thought, and yet with- 
out even a spendthrift’s gratification. The dull 
hours slip between our numbed fingers like snow 
about the hands of the drowsy wanderer in the drift ; 
yet each of these hours is precious and priceless, full 
of unnumbered possibilities. Let us fill them to the 
very lips with pleasure, with experience, which in 
the end is the highest pleasure, till our life brims 
and runs over like a golden cup flooded with golden 
wine. This is the noblest purpose, this is the loftiest 


64 


DOOM! 


profit, to garner the harvests of unlimited and ex- 
quisite experiences, to crush the yellow ore of enjoy- 
ment from the gray rock of common years, to be as 
gods, knowing good and evil. There is a sentence 
in that sweet-scented manuscript of Oriental knowl- 
edge which we call the Wisdom of Solomon, which 
may be taken as the text of my sermon, and which 
should be graven over the portals of the House of 
Life. It is that sentence which warns us to let no 
flower of the spring go by us. In a fleeting life, 
where all things are fading about us, we must be for- 
ever, Ixion-like, catching at shapes of immortal beau- 
ty, content to perish rather in the pursuit of so 
glorious a phantom than to linger in the dull mo- 
notony of sordid and commonplace habits, surround- 
ings, and occupations. Whatever gives the quick- 
ened senses pleasure, vivid hues or subtle odors, or 
the voices of plaintive music, or the shifting passion 
and pathos of women’s love, or the blood of the vint- 
age, crimson or amber in the silver chalice, whatever 
joy or experience stirs the pulses and sets the lifted 
spirit free, cling to that with your whole heart, for 
in that way lies wisdom. For the rest, the rest, I 
may say with the dying Dane, is silence.” 

J ack’s voice died away into stillness ; he stood for 
a moment surveying with dreamy eyes and slightly 
parted lips the summer sea; then, while his audience 
were wondering what he was going to say next, he 


“THE BEST OF THE KIND ARE BUT SHADOWS.” 65 


bent his head slightly to the company and returned 
to his comfortable deck-chair, by the side of Mrs. 
Yan Duyten. 

That lady complimented Jack warmly upon his 
eloquence. Jack thanked her with a smile. 

“ Golden words, my dear madam,” he answered — 
“ golden words. It is not given to every one to grasp 
their full gnomic significance.” 

Which was quite true, for the majority of the au- 
dience did not, to use the expressive words in which 
Yan Duyten gave his opinion upon the address, 
“ know what the devil the man was talking about.” 

The rest of the little entertainment was ordinary 
enough. One or two people sang songs or recited, 
and then came a little collection which was liberal- 
ly supplied, and insured the poor widower a fairly 
large sum. 

“ Poor fellow,” said Ehoda to Flavian, “ the money 
won’t gladden his heart much now, I am afraid. How 
terrible it must be to bear about the consciousness of 
having stifled a life, especially when that was a be- 
loved life.” 

Flavian shuddered. He was glad that the girl’s 
face was turned away from him, and that no one was 
looking at him but the German professor, for he 
knew well that he had turned deadly pale, and for 
some seconds that seemed like centuries he could not 
utter a word. 


5 


66 


DOOM! 


At last he spoke, and for once there was a genuine 
unsiinulated sympathy in his voice as he said, in a 
low tone, “Terrible indeed. I can hardly imagine 
a more terrible memory.” 


WHAT IS THIS THREATENING TERROR?” 


67 


CHAPTER V. 

“WHAT IS THIS THREATENING TERROR?” 

Above, the moon was riding high in the heavens ; 
below, the great black welter of waves spread them- 
selves out to immensity. Every now and then the 
wind, that baby zephyr of the morning, grown by 
this to something a thought more blustering than 
boyhood, sent its cool breath abroad, causing crisped 
curves of white foam to shiver themselves against 
the vessel’s side. Steadily through the night the At- 
lantis made her way, cleaving the waters and shat- 
tering into quivering gold-dust the reflection of the 
cold, bright stars. All was very quiet on the great 
ship. People go to bed early as a rule on board a 
liner. Some of the women were still in the ship’s 
ealoon, reading, or working, or talking. Most of 
them had gone to their cabins. 

The smoking-saloon alone was full of light and life 
and men ; red gleams from its , crimson - curtained 
windows glimmered on to the deck, and snatches of 
human babble and human laughter oozed from the 
vaporous atmosphere of the room. Jack Harris was 
entertaining the company with a few of his fantastic 


68 


DOOM! 


ideas and many of his maddest and merriest stories. 
Captain Judge, who was among the listeners, was 
amused to find that Jack was shrewder than he had 
at first fancied, or than his address would have allow- 
ed him to suppose. Mr. Yan Duyten from his corner, 
the corner nearest the spittoon, was surveying Jack 
with a quiet wonder as to whether that sort of game 
would really pay out yonder — that sort of game be- 
ing the observations which Jack Harris had made 
that afternoon, and out yonder always being, in Yan 
Duy ten’s phraseology, the United States. 

All the male passengers of the Atlantis were not 
included in the merry company that thronged the 
smoking-room ; two of the men’s cabins were at that 
moment tenanted by their temporary occupants. \ 
One was the cabin of Flavian. i 

Flavian sat by himself on the edge of his sofa, 
fighting with shadows. The shadows were the mem- 
ories of his own past — princes of the power of the 
air, all of them. Some of them were ugly devils to 
exorcise ; but they were not the worst. Other phan- 
toms more difficult to deal with thronged about him,, 
the phantoms of his own hopes, the hopes that a few 
days had quickened and fostered till they had grown 
to the strength of giants. The fisherman in the 
Arabian story, who sees the monstrous form of the 
Jinn rise from the neck of a small jar and expand 
and darken sea and sky„ was not more horrified than 


“What is this threatening terror?” 69 

Flavian when he found that a mere question which 
he had asked himself had suddenly converted itself 
into a dominant, irresistible thought. 

He had asked himself some terrible questions only 
that morning. Could he ever love again? Was it 
possible that after all his ruined life might be re- 
stored — that he might be able to accord himself ab- 
solution, and seek at once forgiveness and forgetful- 
ness in a new passion that should make the new life 
seem the only possible life ? He knew now that he 
was in love, was what he called in love, with Rlioda 
Yan Duyten; he knew, too, that she was drifting 
into love for him — that she would inevitably love 
him, if he chose to allow her to love him. 

Here, in the quiet and silence of his cabin, he had 
tied his soul to the rack and was torturing himself 
with terrible interrogations. Had he the right to 
grasp at this summer’s flower of love so unexpected- 
ly blossoming on his path ? W as it not part of the 
penance for his sin, a penance he was bound to pay, 
to turn his face away resolutely from all the joy that 
life with love in it can offer, and to be forever the 
widowed lover of Nathalie? A week ago he had 
believed that it was so ; a week ago he had sworn to 
his sick soul that nothing could ever again awake in 
him&the hopes and fears of love ; that nothing was 
left him but to redeem his past by some obscure, 
useful life, lived out to the end alone. Now, the 


70 


DOOM! 


glance of a girl’s eyes and the sounds of a girl’s 
voice had destroyed this belief, had taught him that 
he was as hungry as ever for happiness, as eager for 
love, as keenly sensitive of the beautiful possibilities 
of life, as he had been in the days of untainted youth. 
If this fair girl loved him, had he the right to take 
her love, to offer her a life so burned and blackened 
by fiery passions and strange experiences and by such 
a crime? Was he free to grasp at this wonderful 
chance of beginning a new life in the new world, 
with all the happiness and all the varied opportuni- 
ties that would come with a beautiful and rich wife ? 
These were the questions which he strove in vain to 
answer, as he sat there with his arms folded, staring 
into the dim vacancy of his little room, and peo- 
pling it alternately with fearful and with gracious 
phantoms. 

Another cabin was occupied by its tenant that same 
night — the cabin of the German professor. 

If any one on board the Atlantis , from Captain 
Judge downward, could have possessed the privilege 
of entering its seclusion unawares, that person would 
have been surprised in no slight degree at the sight 
he would have beheld. The man who sat there wore 
the professor’s habit, but the head which surmount- 
ed all was not the mild, scholastic head with which 
those on board were so pleasantly familiar. The 
close-shaved man with the short-cropped hair who 


“WHAT IS THIS THREATENING TERROR?’ 


71 


sat there silently, looking at a little volume which he 
held in his hands, was not an old man, not even an 
elderly man. lie had, perhaps, like the pilgrim of 
the Italian epic, passed through half the pathway of 
his life, taking life at a standard of the Psalmist — 
certainly he had not overpassed it. The face was 
strong, quiet, masterful. The square jaw told of fine 
and hold determination ; the firm mouth avouched 
the capacity to carry the determination into effect. 
The hair, such as there was left of it after the shav- 
ing and cropping, was fair hair, fair even to redness 
— the red hair of the Northern races. The stern 
gray eyes were wet with tears — so wet that the man 
could scarcely see through their melancholy mist the 
open page of the little Italian book he held, and the 
Russian verses written on it in a woman’s hand. 

His strong frame sometimes shook with silent sob- 
bing ; save for such tremors, he sat still and motion- 
less, heedless of the passage of time, conscious of 
nothing but the open volume with the writing which 
he could barely see for the dim light in the cabin 
and the blurring of his own tears. Then he let the 
book fall on his bed, and dropping his head on his 
crossed arms over it, allowed all the agony that was 
rending him to escape in one convulsive, stifled cry 
of “ Nathalie, Nathalie, Nathalie.” 

Suddenly the quiet of the night was startled into 
noise. There came a grinding crash, horribly jarring 


72 


DOOM! 


the silence, as if some wild convulsion were tearing 
thS ship in pieces; the vessel seemed to reel and 
shiver through all her bulk, and then stood still, as if 
the fierce life that kept her tearing through the wa- 
ters had suddenly gushed out of all her iron pulses 
in one grim spasm. 

The second of fearful noise was succeeded by a 
second of still more fearful silence, during which ev- 
ery man, woman, and child on board the Atlantis 
drew breath in fear, and then noise again, the noise 
of angry voices, of frightened cries, of hurrying feet, 
and the shouting of hoarse commands. 

Jack Harris was in the middle of one of his most 
brilliant sentences, when the terrific crash silenced 
him and startled the merry company of the smoking- 
room. Judge leaped to his feet and had flung out 
of the room and on to the bridge before the rest 
could realize that anything had happened. For a 
moment they all sat silent, staring with blanched 
faces at the vivid patch of light where the door 
yawned open, and at the vaporous films of pent - up 
smoke slowly swirling in grotesque curves and spirals 
out into the free air. The bravest among them felt 
their hearts stand still for a second, as they paused, 
motionless, in the fascinated silence of an unexpected 
fear. Then they all rushed into the night, to find 
the deck alive with hurrying sailors, and to meet the 
stream of excited men and bewildered women who 


“WHAT IS THIS THREATENING TERROR?” 


73 


poured wildly up from below to learn the secret of 
the terror that had invaded them. 

When that ominous thunder reverberated through 
the ship it woke two men from painful meditation. 
As the horrible noise rumbled into silence, Flavian 
staggered to his feet, and clung for a moment to the 
door in a paroxysm of unconquerable alarm. His 
overwrought nerves were strained to their utmost 
tension by his warring emotions, and the dread dis- 
turbance of silence and night for a moment un- 
manned him. He leaned gasping against the door, 
like one awaking from a horrid dream of threatened 
death, who can hardly believe that the peril is past, 
that the fear which seemed so real was only a juggle 
of the fancy. 

Only for a moment, however, was Flavian un- 
nerved, only for a moment was he unable to realize 
that what had occurred was some accident to the 
ship, and had no nearer personal connection with him- 
self. Then a woman’s name came to his lips, and a 
woman’s image entered his mind. He rushed into 
the saloon and found it thronged with women and 
children. Some were hurrying on deck in spite of 
the entreaties of the stewardess, whom others were 
besieging with passionate inquiries as to what had 
happened, which the woman, cool and courageous, 
but as ignorant of the catastrophe as the frightened 
passengers, was wholly unable to answer. 


74 


DOOM! 


Flavian’s eager eyes hurriedly investigated every 
group in search of Ehoda. Then he recollected 
that the Yan Duyten girls occupied the captain’s 
cabin on deck, which had been yielded to them by 
Judge, and he threaded his way as rapidly as he could 
through the clustering women to the stairs, and so 
up on to the deck. 

The occupant of the German professor’s cabin 
raised his head when the crash came. For a mo- 
ment he sat still, collecting himself. His strong 
nerves were well trained to implicit obedience on his 
will, and in a few seconds he had realized that an ac- 
cident had happened, and had decided upon his own 
course of action. He caught up the mass of grizzled 
hair that lay near him and hurriedly put it on, hid 
his keen eyes behind spectacles, assured himself of 
the companionship of a pistol, and passed out into 
the saloon, the composed, impassive German pro- 
fessor with whom every one on board was familiar. 

As he came into the saloon Flavian was leaving it 
to mount on deck. The professor saw him and im- 
mediately followed, heedless of the entreaties and in- 
quiries shrieked at him by some of the women as he 
passed. 

Flavian found the deck a confused mass of human- 
ity. Women were rushing about, catching at all who 
passed them and asking incoherent questions. Some 
children had made their way on deck, and apparent- 


WHAT IS THIS THREATENING TERROR?’ 


75 


1 y found a fearless enjoyment in the novelty of the 
situation, which contrasted curiously with the alarm 
of their elders. Most of the male passengers had 
rallied together in a little cluster, eager to do some- 
thing, but ignorant alike what to do and what had 
happened. 

Jack Harris, producing a gigantic revolver, and 
striking a dramatic attitude, announced his fixed 
determination to shoot any man who attempted to 
get into the boats before the women were all in safe- 
ty, a heroic determination which was interfered with 
by the steward, who, after cautiously removing the 
weapon from Jack’s unwilling fingers, assured him 
that there was no present intention of lowering the 
boats. 

Flavian stared anxiously about him. There was 
something odd and ghastly in the way in which the 
Atlantis lay so still on that still sea, with no long 
furrow of divided water rippling at her wake. The 
brightness of the moon made everything on deck 
visible, and yet perplexing by the brilliancy of its 
light and the corresponding blackness of its shad- 
ows. 

She was not among those fearful, clamorous wom- 
en ; of that Flavian felt very sure. As he hurriedly 
forced his way across the deck he came upon a kneel- 
ing figure, a woman’s, hidden away under the over- 
hanging shadow of one of the boats. He paused for 


76 


DOOM! 


an instant, wondering if that were Rhoda ; then a 
quick glance told him who it was — it was the lady 
lecturess, the prophetess of the new creed. She was 
audibly praying in a low, firm voice for the souls of 
all sinners on board. She was quite quiet, quite dig- 
nified, as she knelt there in that obscure corner, well 
out of the way of every one, earnestly breathing her 
petition to the courts of Heaven for her erring com- 
panions, “ and for me, too, a sinner.” 

Flavian felt oddly touched by her courage. Her 
grim face seemed to grow gentle under the benign 
light of the moon and the influence of the ten- 
der thoughts that were softening the hard lines of 
her lips into prayer. But his errand was not with 
her, and once again Flavian sent his eyes wander- 
ing through the perplexing lights and shadows, and 
pierced a slow pathway through the jostling, hus- 
tling, bewildered groups. 

As he reached the captain’s cabin he saw a wom- 
an’s form at the door, and his heart beat quicker, for 
it was Rhoda. She was leaning against the door- 
post, very still, till he was close to her, almost touch- 
ing her. Then she turned and saw him, and a glad 
look came into her eyes. 

“ What has happened ?” she asked. 

Her face turned up to his was very pale in the 
moonlight, but her scarlet lips were firm and her eyes 
were strangely bright. For the rest of his life that 


“WHAT IS THIS THREATENING TERROR?” 


77 


pale, fixed face, that fair red mouth, and those eager, 
starry eyes were Flavian’s dearest memories. 

“ What has happened ?” she asked again. “ Mam- 
ma and Evleen are on deck with papa, but I ” — for 
a moment her voice faltered — “ I waited here.” 

She had withdrawn a little into the shadow of the 
doorway, and he had followed. There they two 
seemed to he alone in the midst of all the excite- 
ment. All sense of danger, all prudent thoughts, all 
recollections of regret were swallowed up for Fla- 
vian in a sudden wave of passion, unconquerable, mer- 
ciless. 

“ I do not know,” he answered, stooping over her, 
his voice sounding hollow and ghost-like in his ears. 

Then madness mastered him, and he reached out 
his hands to her. 

“ If there is danger,” he whispered, “ let us die to- 
gether.” 

There was no mistaking the expression of her pal- 
lid face, of her wide eyes, as he spoke. 

“ Let us die together.” 

She repeated the words after him with tender, pas- 
sionate acquiescence, and then he caught her in his 
arms and kissed her on the mouth. 

“ My love, my love !” he said ; and she, silent, clung 
to him, yielding to his embrace for one wild, enchant- 
ing moment. Then she pushed him gently back, 
but he caught hold of her hands and held them, look- 


78 


DOOM! 


ing into her frank eyes and reading there his an- 
swered love. 

It was barely ten minutes since the accident first 
occurred, and yet they seemed to have stood there 
for an eternity, gazing each into the other’s eyes. 

Then their dream was broken. Over the crowded 
deck a man’s clear voice rose high, and before it the 
noise dropped to a murmur and died out plaintively 
into silence. 

The voice was Captain Judge’s, ringing out firm- 
ly, its every note encouraging his faltering, startled 
listeners. There was nothing to fear, he assured 
them, and the very way in which he uttered the 
words carried a conviction of their truth to the hear- 
ers. An accident had happened to the machinery ; 
the ship’s course would be delayed for a little, but . 
there was no cause for alarm, not the slightest. The 
best thing every one could do was to go to bed at 
once and sleep unconcernedly, and leave the deck 
clear. 

The saloon passengers, hearing his words, felt reas- 
sured. The emigrants — the people in the steerage, 
huddling together, all their babel of nationalities 
blended into the common humanity of dread — heard 
him and were reassured, and suffered themselves to 
be pacified by the officers and sailors who had with 
difficulty kept them back. 

Cool, reliant, talking to that terrified mob as com- 


“WHAT IS THIS THREATENING TERROR?” 


79 


posedlj as if he were leading the conversation at 
dinner, Captain Judge looked every inch a hero, 
especially in the eyes of Evleen Yan Duyten, who, 
leaning on her father’s arm, had managed to get 
quite close to where he stood and spoke. The elder 
Yan Dnytens, man and woman, had faced death too 
often in their rough youth to be unnerved by any 
peril, and the girls inherited their courage. 

Among Rhoda Yan Duyten’s dim memories of 
that wild night, one memory in especial haunted and 
perplexed her. 

It was an odd, disagreeable memory, vague, impal- 
pable, and confused, like the blurred reflection on 
water when the wind troubles its surface. It floated 
across her brain as formlessly as a marred dream-pict- 
ure broken by untimely awakening. With all her 
concentration the memory was as fleeting and intan- 
gible as a shadow — this memory of a man with a re- 
volver in his hand, standing somewhere in darkness. 
So many thoughts, hopes, fears, and emotions had 
crowded upon her mind in that fantastic night that 
she could not, for all her thinking, evolve anything 
clearer from this fitful mental image than that some- 
where in the blackness a man’s form hovered, hold- 
ing a pistol in his hand, on which the moonlight 
glinted coldly. The image seemed to rise upon her 
out of the bewildering gloom just before Flavian’s 
sudden caresses banished all other thoughts from 


30 


DOOM! 


her mind. When she raised her head from her lov- 
er’s embrace, and heard the sound of Captain Judge’s 
reassuring voice, the mysterious apparition had van- 
ished. 

She spoke of this strange impression to Evleen, and 
her sister laughed and told her of Jack Harris and 
his melodramatic heroism and prompt disarmament. 

Klioda smiled at this story of the illustrious singer, 
who had behaved pluckily if not practically. And 
yet she did not think it was Jack Harris whom she 
had seen. Ho doubt the excitement and the dark- 
ness had confused two separate impressions, for Rho- 
da could almost have sworn that the figure she saw, 
standing so close to Flavian with a weapon in its 
grasp, was the figure of the German professor. 


LOVE IS ENOUGH.’ 


81 


CHAPTER VI. 

“LOVE IS ENOUGH.” 

Morning crept up between the sea and sky, first 
turning heaven a livid hue and then flushing its 
sallow spaces with crimson light. The sun peered 
up over the rim of the world on the tranquil waste 
of waters, and on the stately ship that lay there so 
peacefully, almost motionless, on the surface. 

There was hardly a wave on the gray, sleepy sea ; 
it undulated a little, with the ambient writhings of a 
torpid snake, and the flattened planes of water caught 
the largess of the sun and glittered with all the splen- 
dor of a tropic serpent. 

It was an exquisite morning; one of those rare, 
calm, summer days at sea when all is so strangely fair 
and still that the traveller almost fancies that if he 
strained his ears a little he could hear the sound of 
distant church -bells ringing as he had often heard 
them ring over familiar meadows not more tranquil 
than those flowerless fields of sea on which his eyes 
rest. 

There were few, however, on board the Atlantis 
who had much leisure for dreamy admiration of the 
6 


82 


DOOM! 


beauty of the morning. Captain Judge and those 
under him had been up all night combating the trou- 
ble which had thus taken them unawares, and were 
in no mood for speculative contemplations of nature. 

With the first pallid presence of the dawn passen- 
gers began to make their appearance on the deck, * 
and to eagerly solicit information as to the nature of 
the accident and the precise degree and imminence 
of the threatened danger. 

Jack Harris and a few others had declined to take 
Captain Judge’s hint and retire to their cabins. Like 
Sir Toby Belch, Jack argued that it was “too late to 
go to bed” by the time the first alarm over the ac- 
cident had subsided, and he urged upon the revellers 
of the smoking-room the necessity of going and 
burning, if not some sack, at least some more to- 
bacco. 

Jack had quite got over the first melodramatic im- 
pulses into which his excitement had carried him, 
and he was now very anxious to make the most of a 
somewhat unusual experience. It is not given to 
every adventurous poet to run the risk of shipwreck 
on his first voyage, and he did not like to let the 
golden opportunity slip by without extracting from 
it all its possible sweetness. He pointed out the joy 
of seeing the sun rise over the sea, a joy which hith- 
erto he had denied himself with the greatest compos- 
ure ; and he dwelt, too, on the additional brilliancy 


“LOVE IS ENOUGH.’ 


83 


which was sure to be infused into conversation con- 
ducted under such unwonted conditions and in the 
face of such mysterious perils. 

These arguments were wholly thrown away upon 
Flavian. He had said good-night to Rhoda ; his head 
was dizzy with the events of the night, and he longed 
for sleep, or at least for seclusion. 

The German professor had disappeared. He had 
been seen on deck, but as soon as it was clear that 
the accident was not immediately serious he had 
vanished below-stairs again. 

Van Duyten, who knew something of engineering 
and machinery, had quietly shown Captain Judge 
that he might be of use, and had been permitted to 
accompany him in his investigation of the disaster. 

But there were others whom the counsels of Jack 
Harris influenced, and who were ready to make a 
night of it with him. These free spirits were al- 
lowed their way by Captain Judge, on the condition 
that they kept themselves strictly inside the limits 
of the smoking- cabin, and on no account emerged 
therefrom to interfere with him and the new re- 
sponsibilities suddenly put upon him. This pledge 
being given, Jack and the more festive of his fellow- 
passengers retired to the room they had so abruptly 
quitted when the noise of the accident first shook 
them from their pleasant ease, and there they essayed 
to cheat the long hours with talk and laughter. 


84 


DOOM! 


But man is mortal and sleepy. One after another 
the voices grew lower and died out ; one after an- 
other the wassailers of the smoking - saloon allowed 
their senses to slip away from them into sleep. Jack, 
in a pause after an unusually felicitous utterance, 
looked round and found that his audience were all 
asleep. Surveying them scornfully, he was mentally 
comparing himself with Socrates at that wild ban- 
quet told of by Plato, when his own head nodded, 
and before he was aware of it he, too, was asleep, 
and dreamed bewildering dreams, in which the ship- 
wrecks of transpontine theatres mingled themselves 
up with Athenian banquets in a marvellously inco- 
herent medley. 

He woke up stiff and cold, and rather cross, to 
find that it was broad day, that the last of his com- 
panions was staggering sleepily through the opened 
door, that the cool salt air was very grateful on the 
rank atmosphere of tobacco and spirits, and that he 
had missed seeing the sun rise over the sea after all. 

What was the accident ? 

That was the point on which everybody on board, 
with the exception of Yan Duyten, who knew all 
about it, was eager to gain information. All the 
ship’s officers, from Captain Judge downward, were 
energetically interrogated by excited passengers, who 
woke up preternaturally early from such disturbed 
sleep as they had been able to get, and who were far 


LOVE IS ENOUGH. 1 


85 


hungrier for details of the accident than for break- 
fast. The matter, luckily, was easy to explain, and 
was explained to the curious by Yan Duyten, who 
took upon himself the task of acting as Judge’s 
vicegerent in this particular. 

Part of the ship’s machinery had unexpectedly 
given way without the slightest warning, and had 
fallen on one of the powerful double engines which 
drove the vessel through the water. The engine on 
which the broken bulk of iron had fallen had been 
completely disabled. If the descending mass had 
fallen but a single inch nearer to one side it would 
have struck the other engine too, and in destroying 
it have left the Atlantis completely crippled, with 
only her sailing power to trust to, or the chance of a 
passing vessel to take her in tow. 

Luckily, however, that single inch made all the dif- 
ference. One engine was left intact, and with one 
engine the Atlantis could be successfully worked, 
though at a slower rate, until New York was reached. 
The engineers of the ship were busily engaged in di- 
recting the removal of the debris of the ruined en- 
gine; as soon as that was accomplished the vessel 
would once more make steam for Sandy Hook. 

Such were the cheering tidings of Yan Duyten. 

There is hardly a stranger sight ir the world than 
that of a great transatlantic steamship lying motion- 
less in the middle of a smooth and silent sea. Trav- 


86 


DOOM! 


ellers so inevitably associate those great floating 
worlds with ideas of ceaseless energy and tireless 
progress that it is quite a shock to their established 
notions to see one of them thus suddenly brought to 
a halt in mid-ocean. 

Who ever thinks of a steamship as stationary, ex- 
cept when it is in the dock ? Once it has left land 
behind, its sole purpose is to push its way along the 
path of the waves, never to cease in its strenuous, 
feverish activity until it reaches the sea-mark of its 
utmost steam in the haven of its destination. 

Even to Captain Judge’s cool and experienced 
mind there was something odd, even uncanny, in the 
way in which the Atlantis rested so quietly, like a 
tired sea-bird, on the face of the quiet waters. To 
the passengers it seemed almost terrible. Even when 
the nature of the accident was explained to them 
they still could scarcely resist shuddering as they 
gazed along the far horizon, beyond which New 
York lay hidden, and contrasted the swiftly cleaving 
motion of yesterday, bringing them stroke by stroke 
nearer to their harborage, with the apathy, the leaden, 
lifeless torpor which had come over the vessel to-day. 

It was as if some spell of strangest witchcraft, set- 
ting at naught the strength of steam, had breathed 
a paralyzing breath upon the gallant vessel, and left 
it helplessly and hopelessly becalmed in the centre 
of an enchanted sea. 


“LOVE IS ENOUGH.” 


87 


To most of the passengers their novel situation 
seemed either hateful, or at least disagreeably an- 
noying. 

Yan Duyten grumbled because he had arranged 
to be back on a certain date; and though nothing 
whatever depended on his punctual return, he was 
irritated at transgressing, were it only by a single 
day, his long-established principles of punctuality. 

Jack Harris plaintively complained that the peo- 
ple of Hew York would be cruelly disappointed in 
being, even for a few hours, frustrated in their de- 
sire to gaze upon the great poet who had written 
“ Women and Graves,” and who had taught an as- 
tonished nation the true purposes of life. 

The German professor expressed great impatience 
at the unexpected delay in his meeting with the 
kinsfolk, to grasp whose hands he had quitted pleas- 
ant Bonn and the kindly Rhine, and trusted to the 
terrors of the deep. 

Jack Harris noted with a kindly pity that he 
quoted Horace, “Illi robur et aes triplex.” Jack 
smiled and whispered to Evleen that the learned 
man was dreadfully old-fashioned. “We shall have 
him quoting Shakespeare next,” Jack said, with a 
little shudder of pathetic horror. 

The prophetess was fretful at the unlooked-for 
liinderance to her work. A world was waiting for 
her, a new world of controversy and converts, and 


88 


DOOM! 


she grumbled sourly at the interruption in her sa- 
cred mission. 

Judge, for the moment oblivious of the fact that 
a longer passage meant more companionship with 
exquisite Evleen Van Duyten, fumed inwardly at 
being compelled to record an accident and a length- 
ened trip. The accident was no fault of his ; no vig- 
ilance could have foreseen or prevented it. But it 
was an accident, nevertheless, and for a moment the 
seamanlike steadiness of Judge’s mental balance was 
forced to swerve by the commotion of his angry 
thoughts. 

All the ship’s company chafed at the delay, and 
the emigrants imprecated it in almost every tongue 
that is talked beneath the canopy of heaven. 

To Flavian, however, the delay only brought de- 
light with it. On the day when the accident oc- 
curred they had counted to make New York on the 
next day. The interruption delayed the arrival for 
at least twenty-four hours, and to Flavian twenty- 
four hours more near to Bhoda’s presence, treading 
the deck she trod, and breathing the sea wind that 
fanned her pale cheek to a faint glow, and played 
with the curls of her golden hair, was a very para- 
dise of content. 

As he leaned upon the bulwark and gazed over 
the glancing water, he wished that the vessel might 
be bewitched, like the ship of Vanderdecken in the 


LOVE IS ENOUGH.’ 


weird legend, and lie forever off Sandy Hook and 
Staten Island, and so compel endless companionship 
between himself and the girl who had kissed his lips 
last night. 

He had not slept since that moment. Through 
the night he had lain in his cabin, dreaming with 
wide, wakeful eyes, and to his own amazement his 
dreams were all pleasing visions. The dark horror 
which up to that night had haunted him, from 
whose shadow he had been seeking in vain to fly, 
seemed not indeed to have vanished, but to have 
fallen far away from him. It hung still on his soul’s 
horizon, dark and hateful, but it lay behind him like 
a drifted thunder-cloud, and ahead his heaven seemed 
bright with the kindling promise of a golden dawn. 
Surely, ah, surely, she loved him. He could feel no 
doubt of that, as his heated imagination recalled the 
cling of her arms about his neck, and the warm, im- 
petuous pressure of her lips to his. He could not 
doubt that she loved him. All he doubted and 
dreaded was lest she should repent with the morn- 
ing the avowal which night and danger had wrung 
from her. How would she greet him when their 
eyes met again under the clear light of day ? 

Every pulse of Flavian’s body trembled with new 
fear when, after vexing his mind with fruitless ques- 
tionings, he suddenly turned and saw that Rhoda 
Van Duyten was standing on the deck. 


90 


DOOM! 


She had just crossed the threshold of her cabin, 
and stopped to speak for a moment to Captain 
Judge, who was passing. Flavian looked at her in 
a kind of mute wonder, asking himself if it were 
possible that so fair a thing could really be about to 
come into his marred life and make it whole and 
hopeful again. The anxious blood had not yet left 
his cheeks, the expression of his eyes and mouth 
were still obedient to his questioning thought, when 
Khoda, leaving Captain Judge, advanced towards 
him. 

Flavian heard his heart beating so loudly that for 
a moment the ludicrous notion flashed into his mind 
that every one on board must hear it, too, in the new 
silence of the pulseless vessel. He seemed to have 
listened to its sound for centuries by the time that 
Rhoda had reached him, and holding out her hand, 
with her frank eyes full on his, had wished him 
good-morning. 

The tones of her voice, the touch of her hands 
were reassuring. The keenest onlooker would have 
discerned in them only the tones and touch of yes- 
terday. But to Flavian, whose nature had in it a 
certain feminine strain which made him delicately 
conscious of the moods of women’s minds, the sound 
of the voice and the pressure of the hand tacitly ad- 
mitted a degree of intimacy of which there had been 
no thought four-and-twenty hours earlier. 


LOVE IS ENOUGH.’ 


91 


They talked for a few moments of trivial things, 
trivially ; of the accident and the stationary ship. 

“ It seems like a soulless thing,” Rhoda said. 

Each was conscious of playing a kind of part. Each 
was conscious of the other’s reserve ; each was eager 
to lay aside the mask. Flavian was the first to do 
so. He turned away from Rhoda’s fair, grave face, 
and looked steadily out to sea. 

“ Last night,” he said, speaking in a low voice — 
“ last night, in a moment of what seemed to be seri- 
ous danger, I allowed myself to reveal what I had 
meant to keep as a holy secret forever.” 

He paused for a moment, with his eyes still fixed 
on the far sea-line, as if he were reading his words 
in the broken clouds that flecked the sky. He did 
not expect her to speak, but he gave her a chance of 
speaking, and the girl, courageous, took it. 

“ I, too,” she said, “ last night, let a secret slip from 
me. We are both alike to blame.” 

“ If we are to blame at all,” he interrupted, pas- 
sionately. 

He swung round, and his look was now intent upon 
her face, which looked lovelier than ever to his hun- 
gry eyes, with the curious determined look on the 
mouth and in the eyes. 

“ Why are we to blame ? I love you. How could 
I help loving you ? It is the noblest thing about me, 
my love for you. If I have done wrong in letting 


DOOM! 


92 

you know that I was a better man than I had dared 
to hope, forgive me and forget me.” 

His voice was charged with the passionate earnest- 
ness of truth, and his words sounded very sweetly in 
the ears of the listening girl. 

“ There is nothing to forgive,” she answered ; “ and 
it is scarcely likely that I could or would forget you. 
Hush,” she added, quickly, for Flavian, leaning for- 
ward, had caught her hand as she spoke ; “ hush. Let 
us speak no more of this now.” 

“ But I must speak to you,” Flavian pleaded. “ My 
life, my soul are in your hands. Have pity on me. 
Let me tell you how much I love you.” 

The girl shook her head. 

“ Hot here,” she said, <c and not now.” 

She paused for a moment, as if reflecting, while 
Flavian held his breath, and watched her with a trem- 
ulous joy that had something of terror in it. 

Then she spoke again. 

“ Yes,” she said, almost as if she were speaking to 
herself, “ after last night we may, we must speak to- 
gether.” 

She fixed her eyes full on him. “ If you are here 
to-night at ten, when the ship is quiet, I will come 
to you for a few minutes. Till then, leave me to 
myself.” 

Flavian bent his head. He wa§ still holding her 
hand, which she had allowed to lie passive in his. 


“LOVE IS ENOUGH.’ 


93 


Stooping a little lie lifted it to his lips and kissed it 
very reverentially. Then he let it go, and it fell by 
her side, bnt there was a warmer color in her cheeks 
as she moved away. 

Flavian, looking after her lithe yonng figure, asked 
himself if it were all a dream, from which he should 
wake suddenly to curse himself for having forgotten, 
even in sleep, his sin of penance. 

He moved from where he was standing, and walked 
slowly up and down the deck, which was rapidly be- 
coming crowded with awakened and excited passen- 
gers, men, women, and children. As he paced up 
and down, two sailors brushed past him in the ex- 
ecution of some order. One of the sailors spoke 
to his companion, and his words suddenly sent the 
blood from Flavian’s face. They were simple, un- 
important words, referring to whatever task the two 
men were engaged upon. But they had a peculiar 
significance to Flavian, for they were spoken in Bus- 
sian. 

There was nothing surprising in the presence of 
Bussian sailors on board a Cunarder. Seamen of all 
nationalities take service under the flag of the Cunard 
Company. But the sound of their voices recalled 
Flavian from the dream-kingdom he had entered to 
that valley of shadows from which he had believed 
himself to have emerged. He shuddered at the ugly 
associations which the sound of Bussian speech had 


94 


DOOM! 


conjured up. He turned to get away from the sail- 
ors, and ran against the German professor. 

“ Curious fellows those sailors,” Flavian said ; “ I 
can’t make out what country they come from.” 

“ They are Russians, I think,” said the professor, 
quietly ; and then the two men separated, and each 
went his own way. 


FREE.” 


95 


CHAPTER VII. 

“FREE.” 

Night, deeply dark and still, reigned in heaven. 
There was no moon, and in the bine blackness of the 
sky few stars hung out their beacon-fires. But the 
light that was lacking to the firmament seemed to 
live instead upon the surface of the water. In the 
wash and swirl of the ship’s wake the writhing 
waves blazed with phosphorescent flame. Night, like 
a new Prometheus, had stolen the celestial fire from 
heaven, only to scatter it in long, lambent masses 
upon the sable field of sea. Save where the screw 
churned the water into this flashing foam, the sea 
was waveless as the sky was windless. 

It was late, and the deck of the Atlantis was well- 
nigh deserted. Such of the women-folk as had not 
yet gone to bed were still in the saloon, working, or 
writing, or eagerly reading the last pages of the latest 
volume that they had borrowed from the ship’s li- 
brary. For in spite of her accident the Atlantis 
was making way again now, counted to reach her 
destination on the next morning, and the students of 
the fiction provided by the ship’s officers for the en- 


96 


DOOM! 


livenment of the voyage were anxious to know the 
last of the fortunes of hero or heroine before the 
arrival. Probably the fair readers knew from expe- 
rience that the book which we begin under one set 
of conditions, and are compelled to lay aside unfim 
ished, is very seldom resumed and concluded unde* 
other conditions. 

The smoking-room, as usual, was occupied by the 
more jovial of the passengers. Jack Harris, who 
hated going to bed early as much as he hated a pict- 
ure by Greuze or a statue by Canova, and who loved 
cigarettes as he loved Whistler’s etchings and Swin- 
burne’s verses, was enthroned there, of course, and 
in view of his approaching arrival in the Hew World 
which was to worship him scintillated with especial 
brilliancy. 

Judge was absent. Since the accident he had 
been, to use his own words, “wildly busy,” and the 
ship’s passengers had seen little of him. Yan Duyten 
sat in his accustomed corner, tranquilly taciturn, sur- 
veying Jack Harris with the expression of humorous 
speculation which always illumined the gaze of the 
millionaire when it rested on the poet of “Women 
and Graves.” 

The rest of the company smoked and drank and 
laughed and chatted, and listened good-humoredly 
to Jack’s eloquence, and shouted boisterous approval 
of his good stories. 


FREE.’ 


97 


Outside, on the darkened deck, Flavian paced rest- 
lessly up and down. The tumultuous thoughts that 
agitated his mind spurred his spirit with a kind of 
fierce joy. He had so patiently argued himself into 
acceptance of his despairing mood, he had so reso- 
lutely taught his fighting soul that it must hence- 
forward be dead to all delight, that his new-born 
sense of freedom and hope and happiness troubled 
his senses like an intoxicating draught. 

His febrile nature had a feminine delicacy in the 
appreciation of all pleasures, which made the expe- 
rience of a pleasure very exquisite to him. That 
very delight in experience, in experiment upon the 
most sensitive chords of being, had lent to his sorrow 
and his shame something like a sense of ecstasy. His 
anguish had been bitter enough, but he had drunk 
its bitterness to the lees as eagerly as men, fighting 
with fever, drain some medicine which has an acid 
savor in it. He hated his crime, and yet he hugged 
it to his heart ; he wore his repentance like a hair 
shirt, with a kind of defiant delight in his own au- 
sterity. He racked out his repentance as he had in 
all his life racked out every emotion that had ever 
seized upon him ; he positively glutted his sick soul 
with sorrow. He found an almost hysterical rapture 
in assuring himself that the book of his youth was 
shut and sealed forever ; that the rest of his life was 
to be but a remorseful penance for the past. 

hr 

( 


DOOM! 


His was one of those imaginative natures with 
whom to resolve strongly affords all the satisfaction 
of a fulfilled resolve, and therefore ingeniously ex- 
cuses the fulfilment. He was sated with regret, al- 
though he knew it not, before he had set foot upon 
the ship which was to convey him to his new career 
of patience and of penance. The sight of Rhoda 
Yan Duyten had been a touchstone to his nature, 
revealing to him that he was already weary of re- 
morse and craving for a new pleasure or even a new 
pain. He had shuddered at monotony ever, and he 
had found that a monotony of grief might be as 
physically exhausting as a monotony of joy. 

The delight of Rhoda Yan Duy ten’s beauty re- 
freshed him ; his passion for her grew with the pas- 
sion for him which his quick eyes saw growing up 
in her bosom, and he persuaded himself, with the 
convincing logic of supreme egotism, that a young 
man need not be entirely overcast by the shadow 
even of a great sin. Repentance was imperative and 
inevitable, he told himself ; but he did repent, and 
deserved forgiveness. He had tacitly accorded him- 
self that forgiveness, and now all the purpose and all 
the passion of which he was capable were devoted to 
the one thought of Rhoda Yan Duyten. 

So Flavian walked up and down in the still black- 
ness of the night, watching the vivid glitter of the 
phosphorescent light burning like pale green flame 


“FREE.” 


99 


on the dancing ripple. His own past life he liken- 
ed to that lurid gleam shifting fitfully upon a sea 
of shadow ; his future, he was resolved, should shine 
with the silver patience of a star. As he lifted his 
eyes from the sea to seek in heaven the planet of his 
destinies, he became aware of a white figure standing 
motionless a little way from him. 

It was Rhoda. He knew it at once, and the glad 
blood flushed his cheeks. It was a good omen, that 
when his thoughts were busy with a fair future his 
glance should rest on the form of his beloved. Yet, 
as he hurried towards her where she stood, framed 
in the doorway of her cabin, with a dim light shin- 
ing in the space behind her, he could scarcely refrain 
from shuddering. She reminded him as she stood 
there of some picture he had once seen, of a girl at 
the gate of a tomb, with the light behind her of the 
sad lamp which burns for the dead. 

The next moment their eyes met and all chill 
thoughts vanished away from him. 

He took her hand and kissed it without speak- 
ing ; then they walked together in silence towards 
the stern of the vessel, and leaned over the bulwark. 
The phosphorescent brilliancy had greatly increased, 
and the living flames zigzagged upon the water with 
mad activity. For a few moments they remained 
silent, watching the quivering flames ; then Flavian 
broke the silence, 


100 


DOOM! 


“ May I have my answer ?” he asked. 

“ Are yon not answered ?” Khoda replied, softly, 
with her gaze still fixed steadfastly on the sea. 

Flavian turned sharply round. In the darkness 
he could just discern the exquisite outline of her 
face. 

“ I scarcely dared to believe it,” he said, in a voice 
so low that it was almost a whisper. “ What am I 
that I should win your love, that I should pretend to 
be worthy of your love ?” 

He reached out his hand to touch hers as it rested 
lightly on the bulwark, and caught it in a passionate 
pressure. The girl trembled a little, but she did not 
withdraw her hand, and Flavian spoke again. 

“ If I am so blest,” he said, “ as to have gained 
your love, I can defy the world. Am I, indeed, so 
blest? You gave me your friendship, and to me, 
lonely, miserable, and an exile, your friendship came 
like the promise of pardon to a dying man. I might 
never have dared to hope for more than your friend- 
ship ; I had sworn to keep my love forever secret 
from you. Last night’s danger overthrew my pur- 
pose, and in a moment of unconquerable impulse, 
which revealed my passion, I seemed to learn that 
you, too, had kinder thoughts of me than friend 
extends to friend. The promise of pardon then 
seemed more like a pledge of Paradise to the doubt- 
ing soul. Will you tell me that I make no error, 


“FREE.” 


101 


that I walk in no dream, that as I live and breathe 
this night, and love yon, I am loved again ?” 

His voice trembled with the intensity of his pas- 
sion. He was desperately in earnest, for he was 
pleading for all that made life dear to him. The 
girl who was listening to him could have no idea of 
the many times in which he had seemed as earnest, 
as impassioned before — could not guess that even 
then, when life and love were opening up for him a 
new horizon and a new hope, he was at the same 
time, half unconsciously, enjoying the dramatic value 
of the situation, and lending to his words a faint em- 
phasis which was not quite reality. He was keenly 
aware of the attractive side of the situation, of the 
darkness of the night, of the cool air, of the swift 
ship and the dividing waters, of the rare beauty of 
the girl beside him, of the picturesqueness of their 
lonely vigil with none but the stars as witnesses of 
their troth. 

She was only thinking that the man she loved was 
beside her, telling her that he loved her. The strange 
conditions under which that love had revealed itself 
may have heightened its charm to her mind, but if 
it did it was quite unconsciously. All she knew was 
that she loved Flavian, and that Flavian was asking 
her to tell him so. Why should she not ? It was 
the truth, and truth was everything to her. 

So she answered him, quite firmly and simply, with 


/ 


102 


DOOM! 


her eyes fixed on the distant darkness, “ I love you, 
Flavian.” 

It was the first time she had ever called him by 
his name. He caught her in his arms and kissed her 
as he had kissed her on the night when their com- 
mon peril revealed their common love. 

“ Khoda,” he murmured, “ my love, my love.” 

She yielded to his embrace passively — a sweet, girl- 
ish sense of shame at his sudden kisses blending de- 
liciously with a strange feeling of pride in being so 
beloved. To him it seemed as if her arms had loos- 
ened him from the burden of his life, that he found 
on her lips the lost youth and the lost ambition 
which he had believed were gone from him forever. 
But the memory of that dark past floated over his 
mind even then, as he held her in his arms, and 
prompted him to speak. 

“ Sweet love,” he whispered, “ sweet love, will you 
be true to me, come what may ?” 

She looked up at him in surprise. 

“ I love you,” she said ; “ how could I help being 
true to you ?” 

To her white soul, to love once meant to love al- 
ways. She knew that the way of the world was not 
her way; she could not understand it. The heart 
once given is given forever, she felt. 

“Do you mean because of my father?” she asked. 

Flavian shook his head. To do him justice, the 


“FREE.’ 


103 


thought of Yan Duyten had not come into his mind. 
His was not a calculating mind. If Rhoda had been 
the only support of some parent, old and poor, who 
could not well exist without her, it would not have 
occurred to Flavian, even for a moment, to think of 
any duty the girl might owe to another so long as 
she cared for him. The fact that Rhoda’s father 
was a rich man was a matter of equal indifference. 
Flavian was only thinking of himself. 

“My father,” said Rhoda, “will not object. I 
know that his only wish would be to make me hap- 
py, and when he knows that I am happy ” — she drew 
involuntarily a little nearer to her lover as she spoke 
— “ he will be kindness itself.” 

Flavian looked lovingly into her eager, pleading 
face. 

“ My dear,” he said, “ I was not thinking of your 
father. He is a rich man, I know, but I am not a 
poor man. Ho, there was nothing of that in my 
mind. My thoughts were very different.” 

“What were they?” she asked, anxiously; and 
then again, as Flavian hesitated, she repeated her 
question with a pretty imperiousness. Women are 
wonderfully rapid in the way in which they accept 
a situation. While poor man is blundering along, 
uncertain what he should say or do next, bewil- 
dered by his good - fortune, woman at once steps 
lightly on the throne that has been offered her, and 


104 


DOOM ! 


wields her sceptre with an air of long-established au- 
thority. 

Flavian was no blunderer. He had almost a wom- 
an’s quickness in appreciating a position ; but Rhoda 
was quicker than he. They were avowed lovers now, 
and she seemed to recognize the fact more frankly 
and fully than he did. “ What are they ?” she asked 
again, imperatively. 

“ Suppose,” said Flavian, slowly, “ that there was 
something in my past life, a great shadow, a great 
sorrow, a great fault, would it make any difference 
to you ?” 

There was an unexpected kind of honor in Flavi- 
an’s composition. He had come to the conclusion 
that it would be unfair to take the girl without let- 
ting her know at least something of the past, and 
having resolved to do so, he went on with his reso- 
lution, even at the risk of perilling his new-born hap- 
piness. 

The girl trembled a little, and there was a star- 
tled tone in her voice as she questioned him again. 
“ What shadow? what sorrow?” she asked. 

“ Listen,” said Flavian. “ I cannot tell you what 
the shadow is which darkens my past. I can only 
say that .it was an error, not a crime. I was young, 
I was impulsive, and I was made for a time the tool 
of designing men.” 

As Flavian spoke, he was really for the moment 


“FREE . 1 


105 


convinced that he was speaking the truth, and that 
he had indeed been the victim of unscrupulous plot- 
ters, who had traded upon his inexperience ; that he 
had been the deceived, and not the deceiver. 

“I was tempted,” he went on, “at an age when 
every young man who adores freedom looks upon 
himself as a chosen apostle in the cause of liberty. I 
thought the opportunity had come for me to serve 
that cause, and I yielded to the temptation. I can- 
not tell you what the cause was within whose fatal 
meshes I was for a time involved. I remained its 
captive until its course led to crime, and then I shook 
myself free. That is all.” 

As Flavian finished he felt as if a load had been 
lifted from his mind. It really seemed to him that 
he had made full confession of his fault, and it al- 
most appeared to him, while he spoke, as if he had 
acted rather nobly than otherwise in the part he had 
played and the manner in which he had withdrawn 
from the ranks of the Nihilists. 

Bhoda’s eyes were wet with tears, and her voice 
shook a little as she clung to him and whispered, 

“ Dear Flavian, I knew that there could be noth- 
ing in your past life of which you had any cause to 
be ashamed. But I have nothing to do with your 
past. Your present and your future are mine, and 
I want to know nothing of what happened yester- 
day, or the day before yesterday. It is enough for 


106 


DOOM! 


me to know that you love me and that I love you. 
Nothing that has happened in the past, nothing that 
can happen in the future, can alter that. I am yours, 
my dear, forever.” 

She was weeping fast as she ended, and Flavi- 
an felt the ready tears spring into his own eyes. 
“ Love, love, I thank you,” he whispered, and kissed 
her again on the forehead and on the lips. They 
stood for a few minutes quite silently ; then Klioda 
lifted up her head and looked at him with fond, 
bright eyes. 

“ I must go now,” she said. “ To-morrow our new 
life begins together in my country, your country 
now. Do not speak to my father until I tell you. 
It will be best so.” 

She held out her hand and he covered it with 
kisses. 

“ Good-night,” she said. “ To-morrow !” 

“ To-morrow, and forever,” he answered ; and he 
walked by her side in silence till they came to her 
cabin door. As they were about to part, he drew 
her once more towards him, and their lips met again. 
Then she opened her door and passed in, and he 
walked slowly along the deck towards the head of 
the stairs leading below. 

Obeying a natural impulse, she came out of her 
doorway again to catch a last glimpse of her lover. 
She saw his form darkly in the distance, moving to- 


“FREE.” 


107 


wards the ship’s stern. As she turned to go back 
again another form moved hurriedly past her. She 
hardly noticed it ; the night was so dark and the 
figure passed so rapidly that she did not distinguish 
its outlines. It was probably a sailor or some be- 
lated passenger, who had been taking his final noc- 
turnal stroll on the decks of the Atlantis . If any 
passenger, it was probably the German professor, who 
had an owl-like affection for midnight promenades; 
indeed she fancied it must have been he. But the 
question did not long trouble her. She went to bed, 
and lay awake long hours thinking of her happiness, 
and fell asleep at last and dreamed of Flavian. 

As for Flavian, he paced up and down the deck 
for long enough, meditating upon his good-fortune. 
When at last he turned to go down-stairs, he gave one 
final look over the vessel’s wake, and murmured to 
himself joyously, “ Free, free, free !” 


108 


DOOM! 


CHAPTER VIII. 

“THAT ENDS THIS STRANGE, EVENTFUL HISTORY.” 

There are not many fairer sights in the world 
than the entrance to New York harbor. As the 
vessel slowly steams between those smiling shores 
where the wooded hills enfold as many sunny spots 
of greenery as did the pleasure-place of Kubla Khan, 
the traveller who makes his approach for the first 
time may well he excused for any amount of enthu- 
siastic admiration. 

Even the most hardened and habitual of ocean 
voyagers would find it difficult not to experience a 
delight in the sight of that fair landscape, even if its 
every hill and creek are as familiar to him as Broad- 
way or Bond Street, even if he could repeat the roll- 
call of the owners of every handsome villa on the 
hill-sides as volubly and as accurately as the Greek 
Rhapsodists of old time prided themselves on repeat- 
ing the Homeric catalogue of ships. 

Those who are so far favored by fortune as to en- 
ter New York harbor on a fine morning of summer, 
may have wandered in many climes and over many 
continents ; but let them ransack their memories as 


ENDS THIS STRANGE, EVENTFUL HISTORY.” 109 


they please they can scarcely recall a spot were Nat- 
ure has been more bounteously prodigal of her 
gifts. 

Jack Harris, sitting on a camp-stool by Mrs. Yan 
Duyten’s side, and sharing with that amiable lady 
the protection of her pagoda-like parasol, was giving 
vent to some very pretty utterances in this regard, 
which made Mrs. Tail Duyten’s portly and patriotic 
bosom swell with pleasure. 

“ I have seen,” murmured Jack, dreamily — “ I have 
seen the flashing foam of the blue iEgean break in 
melodious ripples on the golden sand of that sea-gar- 
den of the Attic town, Phaleron ; I have seen the 
mosques and minarets of Stamboul mirrored in the 
treacherous waters of the Golden Horn ; I have float- 
ed over the Tyrrhene sea beneath the orange-trees of 
Naples; I have seen the fierce waves breaking on 
those fangs of rock which sternly guard, in the port 
of Jaffa, the passage to the Holy Land.” 

He was going to enumerate a still further list of 
the various ports and harbors which he had been 
fortunate enough to behold, but observing that a 
slight yawn creased the folds about Mrs. Yan Duy- 
ten’s ample mouth, he checked himself manfully. 
Even the temptation to expound felicitously the 
fruits of his wanderings was not worthy to be grati- 
fied at the price of boring Mrs. Yan Duyten, so Jack 
brought his eloquence promptly to its concjusjon. 


110 


DOOM! 


“ All these I have seen,” he murmured, solemnly, 
“but never have I looked upon a fairer sight than 
that which unrolls itself before me.” 

Mrs. Yan Duyten rewarded his glowing periods 
with a motherly smile. 

“ I guess you’re about right there, every time, Mr. 
Harris,” she said, approvingly. “ But just you wait 
a bit, young man, till we’ve got you on shore for a 
while, and see if we don’t fix you up some sights that 
will go clean ahead of this. Yes, sir.” 

And Mrs. Yan Duyten brought her hand sharply 
down on to her knee in emphatic endorsement of her 
statement, and smiled caressingly upon the pleasant 
landscape that lay before her. Jack beamed sympa- 
thetically, and was about to express further senti- 
ments calculated to arouse emotion in the transatlan- 
tic breast, when the group was increased by the ar- 
rival of Mr. Yan Duyten and the two girls, with 
Judge in their company. 

Evleen was talking with her usual animation to 
Judge, in whose honest breast there was no small re- 
gret at the prospect of being deprived in so short a 
time of her sweet society. He was the most philo- 
sophical of sea-captains ; he thought that he had long 
ago attuned his mind to the formation of pleasant 
friendships which grew with exotic rapidity on board 
ship, and then vanished forever out of his life, as 
evanescent as the odor of the violet— “ the perfume 


“ENDS THIS STRANGE, EVENTFUL HISTORY.” Ill 

and suppliance of a moment, no more, indeed,” he 
quoted to himself grimly under his breath. He had 
long since assured himself that, as his life was so in- 
evitably a sure succession of meetings and partings, 
he must take such meetings and partings as lightly 
as a healthy man takes waking and sleeping. Yet 
here he was, for all his sea-stoicism, with an odd 
sense of something akin to wretchedness hanging 
over him like an ugly shadow. 

“If you knew how ill all’s here about my heart,” 
he said to himself, sadly, and then went on bitterly, 
“’tis such a kind of gaingiving as might, perhaps, 
trouble a woman.” 

Judge’s weakness was for Shakespeare. He had 
little time for reading, and he had made up his mind 
years earlier that Shakespeare was the best of all 
reading, so he read little else, and knew him well-nigh 
by heart, and talked to himself in citations from the 
beloved author. He quoted him now with a kind of 
sour satisfaction in mocking his miserable mood as 
he looked into Evleen’s bright, beautiful face, and 
thought what a fool he was. But no shadow of his 
thoughts stirred the composure of his face as he 
talked to the girl indifferently of the places they 
passed, and of Hew York and its people and pleas- 
ures. 

The decks had completely lost their look of lazy, 
happy tranquillity, and on this morning had assumed 


112 


DOOM! 


an aspect of bustling activity. The lounging, pictur- 
esque passengers of the last week seemed to have 
been transformed as by magic into hurrying, every- 
day travellers. The ship’s company might well be 
likened to the inhabitants of that Arabian city which 
suddenly fell asleep in the midst of its daily occupa- 
tions, and as suddenly awoke again to gather up the 
threads of life where it had dropped them. 

There were doubtless many on board the Atlantis 
who had been thankful for the week of ocean calm, 
bringing its sea-dreams, and clearing away from heart 
and brain the smoke of busy, rushing life in Lon- 
don, and who would have been glad to prolong yet a 
few days their dream of restfulness. 

There were a few sad faces on deck, but on the 
whole the ship’s human freight seemed to have shak- 
en off the spell which had bound it, and was view- 
ing with cheerful expectancy the great world of 
America as it loomed before the vessel. 

The deck was thronging with people who were 
superintending the final adjustment of their “ goods 
and chattels.” There was the usual handful of peo- 
ple who insist on deferring the packing of their 
trunks until the shortness of time compels a wildly 
incomplete operation. Much to the fore, and quite 
as trying in her way, was the lady who insists upon 
her friends and relatives completing their prepara- 
tions to the fullest, and standing, rugs in hand, ready 


“ENDS THIS STRANGE, EVENTFUL HISTORY.” 113 


to step on shore some two hours before the vessel 
sights land. 

Rhoda, leaning on her father’s arm, was looking 
pale, and she glanced anxiously about the deck in 
search of one who was not present. Jack Harris 
talked to her and she answered absently, for she was 
thinking of Flavian, and wondering why he was not 
there to greet her. She felt very proud and happy, 
but she was eager to meet him again, and his absence 
was not like a lover’s impatience. Judge, too, with 
appreciation quickened, perhaps, by his own mood, 
noted Flavian’s absence and commented on it. 

“ Where is Mr. Hope ?” he asked, and then wished 
he hadn’t, for he saw the faint flush on Rhoda’s 
cheek, and quite misunderstood it. 

“ They have not been able to agree,” he said to 
himself. “ He will not appear till she has gone on 
shore. Poor fellow ! this has been an unlucky cruise 
for some of us,” and Judge stifled a most unseaman- 
like sigh. 

He wished he had not spoken ; but it was too late, 
for Jack Harris and Mrs. Van Duyten took the inter- 
rogation up and pursued it. 

“I wonder he is not here,” said Jack, “to breathe 
the beauty of the morning and hail the land of free- 
dom. Every one else is on deck,” Jack continued, 
glancing over the thronged scene, “ even our grave 
representative of Teutonic culture,” and he waved 
8 


114 


DOOM ! 


his hand towards the poop, where the German pro- 
fessor was perched, puffing his huge pipe complacent- 
ly. The professor saw the gesture, and apparently 
took it at once as a salutation or summons, for he 
climbed down from his post and came towards the 
group, whom he saluted comprehensively. 

Jack repeated to the new-comer his surprise at 
Flavian’s tardiness, and the professor shared in it. It 
really was curious, for the Atlantis was now almost 
along-side the quay, and a steam-tug from the shore 
was making its snorting and puffing way towards the 
vessel. Probably he had overslept himself, the pro- 
fessor suggested, and he hinted that it would be only 
civil to wake him up and let him know that the ship 
had reached her destination. 

“ He must be a sound sleeper,” said Judge, laugh- 
ing, “ if he can command his slumbers through all 
the row that is now going on.” 

He admitted, however, that it might be well to 
wake him, and talked of sending the steward, but 
Jack Harris volunteered to go himself, and promptly 
disappeared down-stairs. 

He had not been gone more than a few seconds 
when he appeared on the deck again, staggering like 
a drunken man, his face white with terror and his 
out-stretched hands trembling painfully. 

He rushed wildly up to the group he had just 
quitted, and cried hoarsely, as he reeled on to a 


“ENDS THIS STRANGE, EVENTFUL HISTORY.” 115 


seat, “ Dead, dead ! My God, lie’s dead ! Mur- 
dered !” 

For a moment those who heard him gazed at each 
other with pale faces, and from all parts of the deck 
people hurried to where they were standing. Then 
a woman’s voice broke the silence with a terrible cry 
of pain, and Ehoda darted from those about her and 
rushed swiftly down below. 

Instantly Judge was after her; but even his prac- 
tised feet were no match for her maddened speed, 
and he only came up with her at the open door of 
Flavian’s cabin. There she stood for one moment, 
looking in, and then with a low groan dropped in a 
helpless heap at the foot of the bed. 

Judge, just behind her, saw her fall, and stooped 
to lift her. Behind him an excited throng filled the 
saloon and choked the entrance to the cabin. Those 
in front saw what had happened, and shuddered with 
horror. 

On the bed lay Flavian, dead. 

The body was on its back, in an attitude of still, 
untroubled repose, the arms stretched tranquilly 
down outside the coverlet. The handle of a dagger 
stuck out from his breast, just above the heart, and a 
blackened stream of blood ran down from the clean 
stab in the night-shirt and stiffened the linen to the 
chill flesh beneath. The eyes were staring open and 
upward in the fixed regard of dissolution ; on the 


116 


DOOM! 


cheeks and chin the dark hairs of the beard, as yet 
unshaved, had grown since death, and contrasted hor- 
ribly in their blue shadow with the livid pallor of 
the face. 

Judge, who was nearest to the body, could see that 
a bit of paper was between the hilt of the knife and 
the bosom of the night-dress. Whoever had struck 
the blow had driven the weapon through the paper 
and the body at once ; whoever had struck the blow 
had struck it well and had killed his victim instantly, 
with that single stroke sped straight and unerringly 
to the heart. 

Judge lifted up the senseless girl and handed her 
to Yan Duyten, who bore her away. Then, with the 
assistance of some of his officers, he cleared the crowd 
away and left a watch at the cabin door, that the room 
might be left unaltered until the police authorities 
inspected the scene of the crime. For a crime it un- 
doubtedly was ; of that Judge felt convinced. ISTo 
suicidal fingers had driven that dagger so steadily 
into the dead man’s heart. It was a murder ; where 
was the murderer ? 

When Judge came on deck he found Jack Harris 
the centre of a crowd of passengers, listening while 
Jack described what he had seen to an enterprising 
reporter who had come on board to interview him. 

Judge at once sent a messenger on shore to com- 
municate with the police, and in a short time a con- 


“ENDS THIS STRANGE, EVENTFUL HISTORY.” 117 


siderable number came on board and proceeded to 
investigate the crime and interrogate the passengers. 
All that could be done at once was to examine the 
scene of the murder, to note the condition of the 
body, and to ascertain where the various passengers 
had come from and where they were going to. All 
the saloon passengers gave satisfactory accounts of 
themselves, and after giving their addresses to the 
police were permitted to land, on the understanding 
that they would be ready to appear and give evi- 
dence when called on. The interrogation of the 
steerage passengers took longer, but had no results. 
Then came the turn of the crew. While the exami- 
nation was being carried on, the ship’s doctor, under 
the directions of the police, had removed the dagger. 
The bit of paper was found to contain some few 
words written in a foreign character. On being ex- 
amined by an interpreter they were found to be in 
Russian, and when translated, read, “ By order of the 
Third Section. Remember Nathalie.” 

This paper led to the immediate arrest of the only 
Russians on board the Atlantis , two Russian sailors, 
but a conclusive alibi was proved for them by their 
officers and fellow-seamen, and they were dismissed. 
******* 

The murder on the Atlantis occupied New York 
attention for quite a number of days. The interest 
culminated when it became known that the German 


/ 


118 


DOOM! 


professor had disappeared, that the family to whom he 
had alleged that he was going were apparently purely 
fictitious, that the address he gave in Hew York was 
entirely imaginary, and that the best efforts of the 
police to trace him were wholly unsuccessful. 

“ The earth has bubbles as the water has, and he is 
of them,” Judge muttered to himself bitterly when 
he heard of this. He knew of the terrible brain- 
fever through which Rhoda was being slowly nursed 
back to life by Evleen, and he knew the cause. 

The large circle of the Yan Duy tens’ acquaintance 
only knew that Miss Yan Duy ten had suffered terri- 
bly from seeing, by mistake, the dead body of a fel- 
low-traveller on board the Atlantis with whom she 
had had some slight intimacy, and that the shock to 
her nerves had much prostrated her. 

The whole episode was at first a little annoying to 
J ack Harris, as it took off considerably from the per- 
sonal eclat of his own arrival ; but he soon found that 
his special knowledge of all the actors in the grim 
tragedy gave him additional interest in New York 
eyes so long as the news was novel. 

The novelty of the news soon wore off. A great 
trotting match first shook its popularity. A dra- 
matic divorce case, enlivened with a little shooting, 
distracted public attention further. The arrival of 
a beautiful English actress and a popular London 
preacher banished it entirely from memory. 


“ENDS THIS STRANGE, EVENTFUL HISTORY.” 119 

It was only remembered by Judge, by the Yan 
Duytens, who went abroad after Ehoda’s compara- 
tive recovery, and by Jack Harris, who occasionally 
made good use of the theme in his lecture on artistic 
emotion. 


THE END. 












































































































































































































1 


































✓ 














































SOME POPULAR NOVELS 

Published by HARPER & BROTHERS New York. 


The Octavo Paper Novels in this list may he obtained in half-binding [leather backs 
and pasteboard sides], suitable for Public and Circulating Libraries , at 25 cents 
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Inside: a Chronicle of Secession. Illustrated 8vo, Paper 

The New Timothy 12mo, Cloth, $1 60 ; 4to, Paper 

The Virginians in Texas 8vo, Paper 

BENEDICT’S (F. L.) John Worthington’s Name 8vo, Paper 

Miss Dorothy’s Charge 8vo, Paper 

Miss Van Kortland 8vo, Paper 

My Daughter Elinor 8vo, Paper 

St. Simon’s Niece 8vo, Paper 

BESANT’S (W.) All in a Garden Fair 4to, Paper 

BESANT & RICE’S All Sorts and Conditions of Men 4to, Paper 

By Celia’s Arbor. Illustrated 8vo, Paper 

Shepherds All and Maidens Fair 32mo, Paper 

“ So they were Married !” Illustrated 4to, Paper 

Sweet Nelly, My Heart’s Delight 4to, Paper 

The Captains’ Room 4to, Paper 

The Chaplain of the Fleet 4to, Paper 

The Golden Butterfly . 8vo, Paper 

’Twas in Trafalgar’s Bay 32mo, Paper 

When the Ship Comes Home 32mo, Paper 

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A Princess of Thule 12mo, Cloth, 1 25; 

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In Silk Attire 12mo, Cloth, 1 25; 

Judith Shakespeare. Ill’d 12mo, Cloth, 126; 

Kilmeny 12mo, Cloth, 1 25; 

Macleod of Dare. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, 1 26 ; 


8vo, Paper 
8vo, Paper 
8vo, Paper ' 
4to, Paper 
8vo, Paper 
8vo, Paper 
4to, Paper 
8vo, Paper 
4to, Paper 
4to, Paper 
4to, Paper 


Madcap Violet 12mo, Cloth, 125; 

Shandon Bells. Illustrated 12mo, Cloth, 125; 

Sunrise 12mo, Cloth, 1 25; 

That Beautiful Wretch. Ill’d... 12mo, Cloth, 125; 

The Maid of Killeena, and Other Stories 8vo, Paper 

The Monarch of Mincing-Lane. Illustrated 8vo, Paper 

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Three Feathers. Illustrated 12mo, Cloth, $1 25; 8 vo, Paper 

White Heather 12mo, Cloth, 125; 4to, Paper 

White Wings. Illustrated 12mo, Cloth, 125; 4to, Paper 


75 

26 

75 

75 

75 

60 

80 

60 

20 

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25 

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10 

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20 

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20 

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35 
50 
60 

36 
20 
35 
60 
15 
50 
20 
15 
20 
40 
50 
60 
50 
20 
20 


Harper & Brothers' Popular Novels. 


2 


FBI OK 

BLACK’S (W.) Yolande. Illustrated... 12mo, Cloth, $1 26 ; 4to, Paper $ 20 

BLACKMORE’S (R. D.) Alice Lorraine 8vo, Paper 60 

Christowell 4to, Paper 20 

Clara Vaughan 4to, Paper 15 

Cradock Nowell 8vo, Paper 60 

Cripps, the Carrier. Illustrated 8vo, Paper 50 

Erema ..8vo, Paper 60 

Lorna Doone 12mo, Cloth, $1 00 ; 8vo, Paper 25 

Mary Anerley 16mo, Cloth, 100; 4to, Paper 15 

The Maid of Sker 8vo, Paper 50 

Tommy Upmore 16mo, Cloth, 60 cts. ; Paper, 35 cts. ; 4to, Paper 20 

BRADDON’S (Miss) An Open Verdict 8vo, Paper 36 

A Strange World 8vo, Paper 40 

Asphodel 4to, Paper 15 

Aurora Floyd 8vo, Paper 40 

Barbara; or, Splendid Misery 4to, Paper 15 

Birds of Prey. Illustrated 8vo, Paper 50 

Bound to John Company. Illustrated 8vo, Paper 50 

Charlotte’s Inheritance 8vo, Paper 35 

Cut by the County 16mo, Paper 25 

Dead Men’s Shoes .. 8vo, Paper 40 

Dead Sea Fruit. Illustrated 8vo, Paper 60 

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Fenton’s Quest. Illustrated 8vo, Paper 50 

Flower and Weed 4to, Paper 10 

Hostages to Fortune. Illustrated 8vo, Paper 60 

Ishmael 4to, Paper 20 

John Marchmont’s Legacy 8vo, Paper 60 

Joshua Haggard’s Daughter. Illustrated 8vo, Paper 60 

Just as I Am 4to, Paper 15 

Lost for Love. Illustrated 8vo, Paper 60 

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Taken at the Flood 8vo, Paper 60 

The Cloven Foot 4to, Paper 15 

The Lovels of Arden. Illustrated 8vo, Paper 50 

To the Bitter End. Illustrated 8vo, Paper 50 

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Weavers and Weft 8vo, Paper 25 

Wyllard’s Weird 4to, Paper 20 

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4to, Paper, 16 cents ; 8vo, Paper 40 


Harper <& Brothers' Popular Novels. 


3 


, PBIOE 

•NTE’S (Charlotte) Shirley. Ill’d. . 12rao, Cloth, $1 00 ; 8vo, Paper $ 50 
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BRONTE’S (Emily) Wuthering Heights. Illustrated 12mo, Cloth 1 00 

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Godolphin 8vo, Paper 35 

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Rienzi 8vo, Paper 40 

The Caxtons 12mo, Cloth 1 26 

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CRAIK’S (Miss G. M.) Anne Warwick 8vo, Paper 25 

Dorcas 4to, Paper 15 

Fortune’s Marriage 4to, Paper 20 

Godfrey Helstone 4to, Paper 20 

Hard to Bear 8vo, Paper 30 

Mildred 8vo, Paper 30 


4 


Harper <k Brothers ’ Popular Novels. 


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Sylvia’s Choice 8vo, Paper 

Two Women 4to, Paper 

DICKENS’S (Charles) Works. Household Edition. Illustrated. 8vo. 

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Nicholas Nickleby Paper 

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Oliver Twist Paper 

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Our Mutual Friend Paper 

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Pickwick Papers Paper 

Cloth 

Pictures from Italy, Sketches by 
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The Old Curiosity Shop... Paper 
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Uncommercial Traveller, Hard 
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The Mudfog Papers, &c 4to, Paper 

Mystery of Edwin Drood. Illustrated 8vo, Paper 

Hard Times 8vo, Paper 

Mrs. Lirriper’s Legacy 8vo, Paper 

DE MILLE’S A Castle in Spain. Ill’d... .8vo, Cloth, $1 00 ; 8vo, Paper 

Cord and Creese. Illustrated 8vo, Paper 

The American Baron. Illustrated ....'. 8vo, Paper 

The Cryptogram. Illustrated 8vo, Paper 

The Dodge Club. Illustrated... .8 vo, Paper, 60 cents ; 8vo, 'Cloth 
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DISRAELI’S (Earl of Beaconsfield) Endymion 4to, Paper 

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Romola. — Scenes of Clerical Life, and Silas Marner. — The Mill 
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Amos Barton 32mo, Paper 

Brother Jacob. — The Lifted Veil 32mo, Paper 

Daniel Deronda 8vo, Paper 

Felix Holt, the Radical 8vo, Paper 

Janet’s Repentance 82mo, Paper 


15 

30 

15 

00 

50 

00 

50 

50 

00 

00 

50 

00 

50 

00 

60 

75 

25 

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50 

20 

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75 


50 

25 

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20 

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20 


Harper & Brothers’ Popular Novels. 


5 


PRICE 

ELIOT’S (George) Middlemarch 8vo, Paper $ 75 

Mr. Gilfil’s Love Story 32mo, Paper 20 

Romola. Illustrated 8vo, Paper 50 

Silas Marner 12mo, Paper 20 

Scenes of Clerical Life 8vo, Paper 60 

The Mill on the Floss 8vo, Paper 60 

EDWARDS’S (A. B.) Barbara’s History 8vo, Paper 60 

Debenham’s Vow. Illustrated 8vo, Paper 60 

Half a Million of Money 8vo, Paper 60 

Lord Brackenbury 4to, Paper 15 

Miss Carew 8vo, Paper 35 

My Brother’s Wife 8vo, Paper 25 

EDWARDS’S (M. B.) Disarmed 4to, Paper 15 

Exchange No Robbery 4to, Paper 15 

Kitty 8vo, Paper 35 

Pearla 4to, Paper 20 

The Flower of Doom, and Other Stories 16mo, Paper 25 

FARJEON’S An Island Pearl. Illustrated 8vo, Paper 30 

At the Sign of the Silver Flagon 8vo, Paper 25 

Blade-o’-Grass. Illustrated 8vo, Paper 30 

Bread-and-Cheese and Kisses. Illustrated 8vo, Paper 35 

Golden Grain. Illustrated 8vo, Paper 35 

Great Porter Square 4to, Paper 20 

Jessie Trim 8vo, Paper 35 

Joshua Marvel 8vo, Paper 40 

Love’s Harvest 4to, Paper 20 

Love’s Victory 8vo, Paper 20 

Shadows on the Snow. Illustrated 8vo, Paper 30 

The Bells of Penraven 4to, Paper 10 

The Duchess of Rosemary Lane 8vo, Paper 35 

The King of No-Land. Illustrated 8vo, Paper 25 

GASKELL’S (Mrs.) Cousin Phillis 8vo, Paper 20 

Cranford 16mo, Cloth 1 25 

Mary Barton 8vo, Paper, 40 cents ; 4to, Paper 20 

Moorland Cottage 18mo, Cloth 75 

My Lady Ludlow 8vo, Paper 20 

Right at Last, &c 12 mo, Cloth 1 50 

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GIBBON’S (C.) A Hard Knot 12mo, Paper 25 

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By Mead and Stream 4to, Paper 20 

For Lack of Gold 8vo, Paper 35 

For the King 8vo, Paper 30 

Heart’s Delight 4to, Paper 20 

In Honor Bound »...4to, Paper 35 

Of High Degree 8vo, Paper 20 

Robin Gray 8vo, Paper 35 

Quean of the Meadow 4 to, Paper 15 


6 


Harper & Brothers' Popular Novels . 


FRIOB 

GIBBON’S (C.) The Braes of Yarrow 4to, Paper $ 20 

The Golden Shaft 4to, Paper 20 

HARDY’S (Thos.) Fellow-Townsmen 32mo, Paper 20 

A Laodicean. Illustrated 4to, Paper 20 

Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid 4to, Paper 10 

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Helen Troy 16 mo, Cloth 1 00 

HAY’S (M. C.) A Dark Inheritance 32mo, Paper 15 

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It surpasses all its predecessors . — N. Y. Tribune. 


STO MONTH'S ENGLISH DICTIONARY. 

A Dictionary of tlie English Language, Pronouncing, Etymological, 
and Explanatory, Embracing Scientific and Other Terms, Numer- 
ous Familiar Terms, and a Copious Selection of Old English 
W ords. By the Rev. James Stormontii. The Pronunciation 
Carefully Revised by the Rev. P. H. Phelp, M.A. pp. 1248. 
4to, Cloth, $6 00 ; Half Roan, $7 00 ; Sheep, $7 50. 

Also in Harper’s Franklin Square Library, in Twenty- 
three Parts. 4to, Paper, 25 cents each Part. Muslin covers for 
binding supplied by the publishers on receipt of 50 cents. 

As regards thoroughness of etymological research and breadth of modern inclusion, 
Stormonth’s new dictionary surpasses all its predecessors. * * * In fact. Stormonth’s 
Dictionary possesses merits so many and conspicuous that it can hardly fail to estab- 
lish itself as a standard and a favorite. — N. Y. Tribune. 

This may serve in great measure the purposes of an English cyclopaedia. It gives 
lucid and succinct definitions of the technical terms in science and art, in law and 
medicine. We have the explanation of words and phrases that puzzle most people, 
showing wonderfully comprehensive and out of the- way research. We need only add 
that the Dictionary appears in all its departments to have been brought down to meet 
the latest demands of the day, and that it is admirably printed. — Times, London. 

A most valuable addition to the library of the scholar and of the general reader. 
It can have for the present no possible rival. — Boston Post. 

It has the bones and sinews of the grand dictionary of the future. * * * An invalu- 
able library book. — Ecclesiastical Gazette , London. 

A work which is certainly without a rival, all things considered, among the dic- 
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ed to the uses of the man of business, who demands compactness and ease of reference, 
and to those of the most exigent scholar. — N. Y. Commercial Advertiser. 

As compared with our standard dictionaries, it is better in type, richer in its vocab- 
ulary, and happier in arrangement. Its system of grouping is admirable. * * * He 
who possesses this dictionary will enjoy and use it, and its bulk is not so great as to 
make use of it a terror. — Christian Advocate, N. Y. 

A well planned and carefully executed w r ork, which has decided merits of its own, 
and for w r hich there is a place not filled by any of its rivals.— N. Y. Sun. 

A work of sterling value. It has received from all quarters the highest commenda- 
tion. — Lutheran Observer , Philadelphia. 

A trustworthy, truly scholarly dictionary of our English language. — Christian Intel- 
ligencer, N. Y. 

The issue of Stormonth’s great English dictionary is meeting with a hearty wel- 
come everywhere. — Boston Transcript. 

A critical and accurate dictionary, the embodiment of good scholarship and the 
result of modern researches. Compression and clearness are its external evidences, 
and it offers a favorable comparison with the best dictionaries in use, while it holds an 
unrivalled place in bringing forth the result of modern philological criticism. — Boston 
Journal. 

Full, complete, and accurate, including all the latest w’ords, and giving all their 
derivatives and correlatives. The definitions are short, but plain, the method of mak- 
ing pronunciation very simple, and the arrangement such as to give the best results 
in the smallest space. —Philadelphia Inquire! . 


Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

Harper & Brothers will send the above work by mail, postage prepaid , to any 
part of the United States or Canada , on receipt of the price. 


HARPER’S WEEKLY FOR 1886. 


On the 2d of January, 1886, Harper’s Weekly entered upon the thirtieth year of 
its existence. The series of its volumes justifies its title as “A Journal of Civiliza- 
tion ” by reflecting, with steadily increasing fulness and accuracy, the progress of civ- 
ilization throughout the period which .these volumes cover, and by embodying as well 
as by recording the continuous advance of American literature and American art. 

In Politics, Harper’s Weekly will continue to represent the principles of the Re- 
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country. It has borne an efficient part in the work of establishing the Reform of 
the Civil Service on such a basis that the early and complete triumph of the reform is 
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In Literature, Harper’s Weekly for 1886 will be signalized by the publication of 
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dedication of Niagara Falls to the public, and the series of international yacht races, 
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